APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

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APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by APOD Robot » Thu May 04, 2017 4:06 am

Image The Perseus Cluster Waves

Explanation: The cosmic swirl and slosh of giant waves in an enormous reservoir of glowing hot gas are traced in this enhanced X-ray image from the Chandra Observatory. The frame spans over 1 million light-years across the center of the nearby Perseus Galaxy Cluster, some 240 million light-years distant. Like other clusters of galaxies, most of the observable mass in the Perseus cluster is in the form of the cluster-filling gas. With temperatures in the tens of millions of degrees, the gas glows brightly in X-rays. Computer simulations can reproduce details of the structures sloshing through the Perseus cluster's X-ray hot gas, including the remarkable concave bay seen below and left of center. About 200,000 light-years across, twice the size of the Milky Way, the bay's formation indicates that Perseus itself was likely grazed by a smaller galaxy cluster billions of years ago.

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by geckzilla » Thu May 04, 2017 4:42 am

Holy processing artifacts, Batman.
Just call me "geck" because "zilla" is like a last name.

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by RocketRon » Thu May 04, 2017 5:56 am

Precisely.

It is spectacular though, innit ?

It would be interesting - maybe even should be mandatory - to include some detail of HOW this was processed.
What do the red & yellow colours represent, and what are they overlaid onto - some sort of visible image from
say a regular telescopic view ? - or maybe an artists conception..... ??

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by Ann » Thu May 04, 2017 5:58 am

geckzilla wrote:Holy processing artifacts, Batman.
What... you want me to be a bit more specific?

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by xiox » Thu May 04, 2017 7:31 am

The algorithm and image are described in our paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.02911

It basically measures the gradient of the image on various scales using a Gaussian gradient magnitude filter. This filter convolves the image with the gradient of a Gaussian (i.e. normal) function, in X and Y, then the total gradient is calculated from these. These gradient images on different scales are then weighted together.

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by Boomer12k » Thu May 04, 2017 8:21 am

I have a hard time comparing it to the visible light cluster image linked in the description... I would not have guessed at a "Target" like spiral and waves... it is hard to relate the two... interesting though it is. Should there not be a "small galactic cluster" some where fairly close, It should not have gone that far in so "short" a time.... right???

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by JohnD » Thu May 04, 2017 8:59 am

Batman? Schmatman!

All together now! Dee-de-dee, dum-de-dum, ah-eeee-ah! This is pure Dr.Who.

At least, the later ones:
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
John

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by neufer » Thu May 04, 2017 11:53 am

Click to play embedded YouTube video.
JohnD wrote:
Batman? Schmatman! All together now!
Dee-de-dee, dum-de-dum, ah-eeee-ah!
This is pure Dr.Who.
Doo-de-loo-doo:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=slosh wrote:
SLOSH (v.) "to splash about in mud or wet," 1844, from slosh (n.) 1814, "slush, sludge, a watery mess," probably a blend of slush and slop.
Art Neuendorffer

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by De58te » Thu May 04, 2017 12:29 pm

To put this size in perspective. The Milky Way is only half the size of the bay wave at the bottom. But to imagine there are some 1,000 galaxies in the Perseus Cluster. The Apod link to the May 20009 image says the cluster is some 1.5 million light years across. So today's image is just some two thirds the size. Still for an observer in one galaxy in the Perseus cluster they must see hundreds of galaxies in their night sky at any given time.
Consider that the Andromeda galaxy is some 2.3 million light years away from the Milky Way. (Although there are some dozen minor galaxies within that distance.) That means if the Milky Way was on the left frame of this image, Andromeda would be more than double the width of this image off the right frame. And Andromeda is our closest large galaxy! Looks like the Local Group is much less as packed as Perseus.
A question comes to my notice. Today's information says that the Perseus cluster is some 240 million light-years distant. In the May 2009 Apod link they said the Perseus cluster is nearly 250 million light-years away. Does that mean that in just 8 years the Perseus Cluster has come nearly 10 million light years closer to us? That's a speed of about 1.25 million light years in one year? Of course if the Milky Way was also closing in at the same speed, both galaxy groups would only be traveling at 625,000 light years a year.
Last edited by De58te on Thu May 04, 2017 12:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by Fred the Cat » Thu May 04, 2017 12:34 pm

APOD Robot wrote: ...indicates that Perseus itself was likely grazed by a smaller galaxy cluster'''...
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by BDanielMayfield » Thu May 04, 2017 12:40 pm

geckzilla wrote:Holy processing artifacts, Batman.
xiox wrote:The algorithm and image are described in our paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.02911

It basically measures the gradient of the image on various scales using a Gaussian gradient magnitude filter. This filter convolves the image with the gradient of a Gaussian (i.e. normal) function, in X and Y, then the total gradient is calculated from these. These gradient images on different scales are then weighted together.


So it ain't no artifact, it's the fact Jack. How they did it may be difficult to understand, but Sanders et. al. seem to have found a new tool for extracting real signal from noisy data. Congrats. Spectacular Image!

The great temperature of this extra galactic plasma reminds me of the mysteriously hot solar corona. Could these temps come from similar causes?

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by geckzilla » Thu May 04, 2017 1:41 pm

BDanielMayfield wrote:
geckzilla wrote:Holy processing artifacts, Batman.
xiox wrote:The algorithm and image are described in our paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.02911

It basically measures the gradient of the image on various scales using a Gaussian gradient magnitude filter. This filter convolves the image with the gradient of a Gaussian (i.e. normal) function, in X and Y, then the total gradient is calculated from these. These gradient images on different scales are then weighted together.


So it ain't no artifact, it's the fact Jack. How they did it may be difficult to understand, but Sanders et. al. seem to have found a new tool for extracting real signal from noisy data. Congrats. Spectacular Image!
It's not an either-or thing. It's both fact and artifact, and it takes a trained eye to interpret.
Just call me "geck" because "zilla" is like a last name.

Jean Bosseler

Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by Jean Bosseler » Thu May 04, 2017 1:43 pm

The frame spans over 1 million light-years across..

Should this not 1 Billion?

Jean Bosseler

Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by Jean Bosseler » Thu May 04, 2017 1:49 pm

Sorry, it is 1 Million!

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by neufer » Thu May 04, 2017 2:09 pm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseus_cluster#Perseus_galaxy_cluster.27s_Cosmic_B_Flat wrote:
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
<<In 2003 a team of astronomers led by Dr. Andrew Fabian at Cambridge University discovered one of the deepest notes ever detected, a B♭, after 53 hours of Chandra observations. No human will actually hear the note, because its time period between oscillations is 9.6 million years, which is 57 octaves below the keys in the middle of a piano. The sound waves appear to be generated by the inflation of bubbles of relativistic plasma by the central active galactic nucleus in NGC 1275. The bubbles are visible as ripples in the X-ray band since the X-ray brightness of the intracluster medium that fills the cluster is strongly dependent on the density of the plasma. A similar case also happens in the nearby Virgo Cluster, generated by an even larger supermassive black hole in the galaxy Messier 87, also detected by Chandra. Like the former, no human will hear the note. The tone is variable, and even lower than those generated by NGC 1275, from 56 octaves below middle C on minor eruptions, to as low as 59 octaves below middle C on major eruptions.>>
Art Neuendorffer

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by klaskinaragingwind » Thu May 04, 2017 2:14 pm

so does anybody see the white nine (digit only, ie: [9]) in the centre of the image?

Is this someone labelling the picture.... or is it really there? There appear to be two letters partially obscured to the right of the nine, about eight point type as well.

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by bystander » Thu May 04, 2017 2:16 pm

Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk.
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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by xiox » Thu May 04, 2017 2:19 pm

geckzilla wrote: It's not an either-or thing. It's both fact and artifact, and it takes a trained eye to interpret.
Yes - there is noise. It gives rise to some of the wiggly lines in the output image (see paper). The number of photons in the input image isn't massive, so we can only apply this to deep observations of bright clusters. I plan in the future to investigate how to reduce the noise optimally, but it's mainly a visualisation technique to see where interesting things are. The "bay" feature is extremely obvious in the raw data.

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by Chris Peterson » Thu May 04, 2017 2:32 pm

geckzilla wrote:It's not an either-or thing. It's both fact and artifact, and it takes a trained eye to interpret.
I wouldn't say the image as a whole could be classified as an artifact in any way. "Artifact" in imaging generally means some kind of structure which isn't related to the underlying data. Of course, there's noise in this image as there is in all images, and noise is often amplified by processing into artifacts. But the image as a whole is showing shock waves and other structure in the intracluster medium around NGC 1275 (the central galaxy in the Perseus Cluster) made apparent by removing the much more luminous glow of the galaxy itself. By flattening that, the otherwise obscured fine x-ray structure becomes visible.

A trained eye can always extract more information from an astronomical image. But this image does not require a trained eye in order to extract the most salient features that the processing was designed to reveal- the large scale wave pattern in the hot medium surrounding this galaxy.
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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by Guest » Thu May 04, 2017 2:41 pm

Would it be possible to overlay the 2009 visible light image over this one? What is the actual source of the energy on this image?

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by xiox » Thu May 04, 2017 3:08 pm

Here's a comparison of visible light with the X-ray emission: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/518 ... orth-Lower

The X-ray image is thermal emission from the hot plasma which fills up most of a galaxy cluster. It has temperatures of around 10 million K, heated as the material which formed the cluster collapsed. The energy source is the thermal energy (i.e. it cools in the absence of heat sources). The emission mechanism is thermal bremsstrahlung, if you're interested. Most of the baryonic matter (not dark matter, but normal electrons, protons, neutrons, etc), is in the form of this hot atmosphere. The atmosphere is supported by its pressure.

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by geckzilla » Thu May 04, 2017 3:20 pm

Chris Peterson wrote:
geckzilla wrote:It's not an either-or thing. It's both fact and artifact, and it takes a trained eye to interpret.
I wouldn't say the image as a whole could be classified as an artifact in any way. "Artifact" in imaging generally means some kind of structure which isn't related to the underlying data. Of course, there's noise in this image as there is in all images, and noise is often amplified by processing into artifacts. But the image as a whole is showing shock waves and other structure in the intracluster medium around NGC 1275 (the central galaxy in the Perseus Cluster) made apparent by removing the much more luminous glow of the galaxy itself. By flattening that, the otherwise obscured fine x-ray structure becomes visible.

A trained eye can always extract more information from an astronomical image. But this image does not require a trained eye in order to extract the most salient features that the processing was designed to reveal- the large scale wave pattern in the hot medium surrounding this galaxy.
...Ok, I definitely did not mean to infer that the entire image is a single artifact. I don't think the audience here is going to instantly understand what they are looking at with a paragraph or two of information explaining it. I think most people get the general idea, though. It just struck me, personally, as having a lot more artifacting than I am used to when seeing image releases from Chandra. Something different, for sure. And I was a little terse. I apologize. Thank you xiox and all for your wonderful work, and also for taking the time to come and talk with us here at the forum.
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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by neufer » Thu May 04, 2017 3:35 pm

Guest wrote:
What is the actual source of the energy on this image?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_1275 wrote: <<NGC 1275 corresponds to the radio galaxy Perseus A and is situated near the center of the large Perseus Cluster of galaxies. NGC 1275 contains 13 billion solar masses of molecular hydrogen that seems to be infalling from Perseus' intracluster medium in a cooling flow, both feeding its active nucleus and fueling significant amounts of star formation. A supermassive black hole with a mass 340 million times that the Sun may be present in NGC 1275's center.

NGC 1275 consists of two galaxies, a central type-cD galaxy in the Perseus Cluster, and a so-called "high velocity system" (HVS) which lies in front of it. The HVS is moving at 3000 km/s towards the dominant system, and is believed to be merging with the Perseus Cluster. The HVS is not affecting the cD galaxy as it lies at least 200 thousand light years from it.; however tidal interactions are disrupting it and ram-pressure stripping produced by its interaction with the intracluster medium of Perseus is stripping its gas as well as producing large amounts of star formation within it.

The central cluster galaxy contains a massive network of spectral line emitting filaments, which apparently are being dragged out by rising bubbles of relativistic plasma generated by the central active galactic nucleus. Long gaseous filaments made up of threads of gas stretch out beyond the galaxy, into the multimillion-degree, X-ray–emitting gas that fills the cluster. The amount of gas contained in a typical thread is approximately one million times the mass of the Sun. They are only 200 light-years wide, are often very straight, and extend for up to 20,000 light-years.>>
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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by Ann » Thu May 04, 2017 3:54 pm

Like you said, Art. The energy and outbursts of the Perseus Cluster are centered on Perseus A, NGC 1275. That includes the special energy and the spiral wave seen in today's APOD.

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Re: APOD: The Perseus Cluster Waves (2017 May 04)

Post by LMPR8R » Thu May 04, 2017 3:59 pm

klaskinaragingwind wrote:so does anybody see the white nine (digit only, ie: [9]) in the centre of the image?

Is this someone labelling the picture.... or is it really there? There appear to be two letters partially obscured to the right of the nine, about eight point type as well.

KGB
I actually see a scribbled figure of a person singing, arms held out in front as if belting out opera....

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