Chandra Release - June 18, 2019

Visual Description: Coma Cluster

The image shows a striking X-ray and optical view of the Coma Cluster, which is a galaxy cluster located about 320 million light-years away from Earth. The X-ray image of the Coma Cluster is characterized by a bright purple-pink hue, while the optical image depicts various shades of pale yellow and white. The X-ray image reveals the distribution of this hot gas, which is concentrated in the central part of the cluster. In the X-ray image, the Coma Cluster appears as a bright, irregularly shaped object at the center with wispy trails below, almost like two fluffy chicks huddled tightly together with their combined 4 legs peaking out at bottom. This image represents a deep dataset of the Coma galaxy cluster obtained by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Galaxy clusters are composed of individual galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter. The hot gas in Coma glows in X-ray light observed by Chandra. The hot gas contains about six times more mass than all of the combined galaxies in the cluster. The galaxies appear as white in the optical part of the composite image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.