Chandra Release - April 4, 2002

Visual Description: Coma Cluster

The Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the Coma Cluster of galaxies features bright, glowing white-purple spots on the left and right sides of the image, like a set of wide spaced, small eyes. The spots are set in textured, clumpy, connected purple masses on a black background. This Chandra image shows the central region - about 1.5 million light years across - of the Coma Cluster. The cluster contains thousands of galaxies enveloped by a vast 100 million-degree Celsius gas cloud.  Of particular interest are the concentrations of cooler (10 to 20 million-degrees) gas around the large galaxies NGC 4889 (left blob with bright spot or “eye”) and NGC 4874 (right blog with “eye”). These clumps of gas, which are 10,000 light years in diameter, are thought to be produced by matter ejected from stars in the galaxies over a period of about a billion years.