Wednesday, January 30, 2013

A supercluster of galaxies

From SciTech Daily:

This ESO picture of the week shows the region around the Abell 901/902 supercluster of galaxies. It was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2.

This deep-field image shows what is known as a supercluster of galaxies — a giant group of galaxy clusters which are themselves clustered together. This one, known as Abell 901/902, comprises three separate main clusters and a number of filaments of galaxies, typical of such super-structures. One cluster, Abell 901a, can be seen above and just to the right of the prominent red foreground star near the middle of the image. Another, Abell 901b, is further to the right of Abell 901a, and slightly lower. Finally, the cluster Abell 902 is directly below the red star, towards the bottom of the image.

The Abell 901/902 supercluster is located a little over two billion light-years from Earth, and contains hundreds of galaxies in a region about 16 million light-years across. For comparison, the Local Group of galaxies — which contains our Milky Way among more than 50 others — measures roughly ten million light-years across.

I want to know about that red star! Read more here: http://scitechdaily.com/the-abell-901902-supercluster-of-galaxies/

No comments: