Ophiuchus Galaxy Cluster

Ophiuchus Galaxy Cluster

A galaxy cluster located about 390 million light years from Earth.

🔹️Astronomers have discovered the biggest explosion seen in the Universe in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster.

🔹️A giant black hole in the central galaxy of the cluster caused the explosion, blasting out jets that carved a cavity in the surrounding hot gas.

🔹️Astronomers obtained this result using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, XMM-Newton, and two radio telescopes in Australia and India.

🔹️The explosion released a factor of five more energy than the previous record holder and hundreds of thousands of times more than typical clusters.

Credit X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/NRL/S. Giacintucci, et al., XMM-Newton: ESA/XMM-Newton; Radio: NCRA/TIFR/GMRT; Infrared: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF

Released on February 27, 2020