X-ray & Optical Images of the Coma Cluster
These images show a deep Chandra dataset of the Coma galaxy cluster, which researchers used to study how the hot gas in the cluster behaves. They found the hot gas in Coma was less "sticky," or had lower viscosity, than expected. X-rays from Chandra are show with an optical image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (white). The low viscosity may be caused by tiny irregularities in the galaxy cluster's magnetic fields reducing the distance that particles can move freely. .
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Chicago, I. Zhuravleva et al, Optical: SDSS