This big beautiful
spiral shines in
X-ray light. It is about 20 times larger than our
Galaxy.
It belongs to
Abell 2029, a
galaxy cluster one billion
light-years away.
(To see only the galaxies, hover your cursor over the image, or follow this
link.)
Galaxy clusters are the
largest structures in the universe that are
supported by gravity.
Abell 2029 is formed by
thousands of galaxies, surrounded by a huge cloud of hot gas and the equivalent of hundreds of trillions times the mass of the Sun in
dark matter.
The spiral is made of gas, mostly hydrogen and helium, heated to tens of millions of degrees.
It was found in a
recent study that used data from NASA's
Chandra X-ray Observatory to show that Abell 2029 had a collision with a smaller cluster four billion years ago.
The
collision affected the gravitational field and caused the intracluster gas to slosh, like wine moving in a
wine glass, shaping the spiral.