Scientists found a wave of ultra hot gas bigger than the Milky Way – Astronomy Magazine

Scientists found a wave of hot gas twice the size of the Milky Way in the Perseus galaxy cluster that they believe is billions of years old.

The study, which is published in the June 2017 issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, combined data from NASAs Chandra X-Ray Observatory with radio observations and computer simulations.

Perseus, named after its host constellation, is 240 million light years away and is made of gas burning so hot it can only glow in X-rays. While studying the burning gas, Chandra found many interesting things, but focused on an enigmatic concave called the bay.

After combining 10.4 days worth of high-resolution Chandra data with 5.8 days of wide-field observations, the team had created an X-ray image of the gas in Perseus. They then filtered the data to highlight the more subtle details and compared the enhanced image to computer simulations of merging galaxy clusters.

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Scientists found a wave of ultra hot gas bigger than the Milky Way - Astronomy Magazine