Galaxies in a feather cluster together and sometimes turn into infernos. It might look like a special effect from a 1960s science fiction TV show, but a brightly colored new image of a cluster of galaxies reveals a "cosmic furnace" and has caught the attention of European Space Agency scientists.
A galaxy cluster is exactly what it sounds like: a collection that can contain thousands of galaxies. In this wild picture, clusters of galaxies (in bluish-purple) collide and raise the temperature of the gases around them in a process known as "shock heating".
Typically, these gases are around 2.7 times hotter than our sun's core, but this cluster is feeling the heat 25 times hotter than the sun's core, ESA said in a statement Thursday.
It took a complex collaborative effort - from ESA's XMM Newtonian X-ray Observatory, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan's Subaru Telescope (which sees in optical infrared), and the Green Bank Telescope (which records radio emissions) - to create the remarkable image.
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The colors mark the functions within the cluster. Orange marks individual galaxies. Gases appear in green (hot and dense) and red (hot and thin). The places where green changes to red indicate where the brutal warming process is taking place.
"The international collaboration of scientists, instruments and data sets has captured this new and exciting aspect of structure formation," the Green Bank Observatory said in a statement.
We don't have to worry about getting burned where we are. The galaxy cluster known as HSC J023336-053022 (XLSSC 105) is four billion light years from Earth. Angry.
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