File:MS 0735.6+7421- Most Powerful Eruption in the Universe Discovered (A cluster of galaxies 2.6 billion light years from Earth.) (2940652927).jpg

Description: Chandra's image shows two cavities - each 600,000 light years in diameter - in the hot, X-ray emitting gas that pervades the galaxy cluster. Although the cavities contain very little hot gas, they are filled with a two-sided, elongated, magnetized bubble of extremely high-energy electrons that emit radio waves. The cavities appear on opposite sides of a large galaxy at the center of the cluster, which indicates that the cavities were created by jets of high-energy particles launched in an enormous eruption from the vicinity of the galaxy's supermassive black hole. These jets blasted through the galaxy into the surrounding multimillion degree intergalactic gas and pushed the hot gas aside to create the cavities.

Creator/Photographer: Chandra X-ray Observatory

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. The mirrors on Chandra are the largest, most precisely shaped and aligned, and smoothest mirrors ever constructed. Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe. The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Medium: Chandra telescope x-ray

Date: 2005

Persistent URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2005/ms0735/

Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Collection: Groups and Clusters of Galaxies Collection

Gift line: NASA/CXC/Ohio U./B.McNamara