Chandra Release - December 17, 2019

Visual Description: NGC 6338

An X-ray and optical composite image features two groups of galaxies called NGC 6338. The dominant colors in the image are bright magenta and blue, with some tiny white dots scattered across the image. The shape of the galaxy cluster resembles that of a fuzzy or blurry butterfly, with two large wings made up of bright magenta and a blue body. In the center of the image, there is a large bright blue-white splotch. The system NGC 6338 is located about 380 million light years from Earth. This composite image contains X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (colored in magenta) that shows hot gas with temperatures upward of about 20 million degrees Celsius, as well as cooler gas detected with Chandra and XMM (blue) that also emits X-rays. The X-ray data have been combined with optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, showing the distant galaxies and foreground stars in white.