Abell 2256 or “Burning Space Narwhal”
X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/Univ. Bolonga/K. Rajpurohit et al.; XMM-Newton: ESA/XMM-Newton/Univ. Bolonga/K. Rajpurohit et al. Radio: LOFAR: LOFAR/ASTRON; GMRT: NCRA/TIFR/GMRT; VLA: NSF/NRAO/VLA; Optical/IR: Pan-STARRS
Hundreds of millions of light years away, a group of galaxy clusters are performing a terrifying dance. At least three star clusters are in the process of colliding to form a single giant star cluster called Abell 2256.
Some astronomers have dubbed it the “Burning Cosmic Narwhal” because of the horn-like appearance of some of the jets in the system and the glowing tuft of radio waves at the top of the image. Researchers have used six of the most powerful observatories to figure out what’s going on in the shards and swirls of this chaotic megacluster.
Each telescope captured a different part of the strange and complex structure. Two of his X-ray observatories captured the hot gas glowing blue in this image. The bright white and yellow star in the image was captured in light and infrared wavelengths.
Radio waves, shown in red in the photo, originate from a variety of sources. The red linear slash is the jet that erupts from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, and the red vortices and ripples arise from the jet material colliding with the surrounding gas. The filament near the top of the image – the cosmic narwhal ‘flame’ – stretches for about two million light-years and likely originated from the cosmic collision itself, which created the shock wave that ran through the cluster. .
But despite this amazing detail, there are still unanswered questions about Abell 2256: there is a faint radio halo near the center of the cluster that has yet to be fully explained, and a radio-emitting galaxy. It contains more than galaxy clusters. we would expect Researchers are analyzing the Vikings of data to elucidate the details of how such giant clusters form.
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