Chandra Release - December 21, 2015

Visual Description: Zwicky 8338

  The X-ray and optical image of the galaxy cluster Zwicky 8338 looks like a dramatic gold filled starry sky with a few gaseous pops of bright blue that stand out from the surrounding celestial bodies. The blue color of the bright areas draws the viewer's attention, while the black background creates a sense of contrast and depth within the image.  Foreground stars appear as small, twinkling points of light, while some galaxies and other distant objects appear as larger, blobby shapes, overall appearing like a festive scene of holiday lights. An extraordinary ribbon of hot gas trailing behind a galaxy like a tail was found using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This ribbon, or X-ray tail, is likely due to gas stripped from the galaxy as it moves through a vast cloud of hot intergalactic gas. With a length of at least 250,000 light years, it is likely the largest such tail ever detected. In this new composite image, X-rays from Chandra (blue) have been combined with data in visible light from the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (yellow).  The tail is located in the galaxy cluster Zwicky 8338, which is almost 700 million light years from Earth. The length of the tail is more than twice the diameter of the entire Milky Way galaxy.