NASA | MSFC | SAO | Chandra X-ray Observatory | 2014 Dec 18
[c]Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/INAF/P.Tozzi, et al; Optical:Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have made the first determination of the mass and other properties of a very young, distant galaxy cluster.
NAOJ/Subaru and ESO/VLT; Infrared: ESA/Herschel[/c]
The Chandra study shows that the galaxy cluster, seen at the comparatively young age of about 800 million years, is the most massive known cluster with that age or younger. As the largest gravitationally- bound structures known, galaxy clusters can act as crucial gauges for how the Universe itself has evolved over time.
The galaxy cluster was originally discovered using ESA’s XMM-Newton observatory and is located about 9.6 billion light years from Earth. Astronomers used X-ray data from Chandra that, when combined with scientific models, provides an accurate weight of the cluster, which comes in at a whopping 400 trillion times the mass of the Sun. Scientists believe the cluster formed about 3.3 billion years after the Big Bang.
The cluster is officially named XDCP J0044.0-2033, but the researchers have nicknamed it “Gioiello”, which is Italian for “jewel”. They chose this name because an image of the cluster contains many sparkling colors from the hot, X-ray emitting gas and various star-forming galaxies within the cluster. Also, the research team met to discuss the Chandra data for the first time at Villa il Gioiello, a 15th century villa near the Observatory of Arcetri, which was the last residence of prominent Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. ...
Chandra deep observation of XDCP J0044.0-2033, a massive galaxy cluster at z>1.5 - P. Tozzi et al
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1412.5200 > 16 Dec 2014