HEIC: North, East, South, West: The Many Faces of Abell 1758

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HEIC: North, East, South, West: The Many Faces of Abell 1758

Post by bystander » Thu Jan 18, 2018 8:11 pm

North, East, South, West: The Many Faces of Abell 1758
ESA Hubble Photo Release | 2018 Jan 18
[img3="Northern Part of Abell 1758 - Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA"]https://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives ... c1801a.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]
Resembling a swarm of flickering fireflies, this beautiful galaxy cluster glows intensely in the dark cosmos, accompanied by the myriad bright lights of foreground stars and swirling spiral galaxies. A1758N is a sub-cluster of Abell 1758, a massive cluster containing hundreds of galaxies. Although it may appear serene in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, the sub-cluster actually comprises two even smaller structures currently in the turbulent process of merging.

Although often overshadowed by its more famous cousins — including the Fornax Cluster and Pandora’s ClusterAbell 1758 contains more than its fair share of intrigue. The cluster was first identified in 1958, and initially logged as a single massive object. However, some 40 years later the cluster was observed again by the ROSAT satellite X-ray telescope, and astronomers spotted something peculiar: the cluster was not a single concentration of galaxies, but two!

Abell 1758 has since been observed many more times by various observatories — Hubble, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, ESA’s XMM-Newton, and more — and is now known to have both a double structure and a complex history. It contains two massive sub-clusters sitting some 2.4 million light-years apart. These components, known as A1758N (North) and A1758S (South), are bound together by gravity but without showing signs of interacting.

In this Hubble image only the northern structure of the cluster, A1758N, is visible. A1758N is further split into two sub-structures, known as East (A1758NE) and West (A1758NW). There appear to be disturbances within each of of the two sub-clusters of A1758A — strong evidence that they are the result of smaller clusters colliding and merging. ...
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