A new discovery captures the cosmic moment when a galaxy cluster – among the largest structures in the universe – started to assemble only about a billion years after the big bang, one or two billion years earlier than previously thought. This result, made using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope, will […]
Category: Galaxy clusters
NASA’s Chandra Rings in New Year With Champagne Cluster
Celebrate the New Year with the “Champagne Cluster,” a galaxy cluster seen in this new image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical telescopes. Astronomers discovered this galaxy cluster Dec. 31, 2020. The date, combined with the bubble-like appearance of the galaxies and the superheated gas seen with Chandra observations (represented in purple), inspired the […]
NASA’s Chandra Rings in New Year With Champagne Cluster
Celebrate the New Year with the “Champagne Cluster,” a galaxy cluster seen in this new image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical telescopes. Astronomers discovered this galaxy cluster Dec. 31, 2020. The date, combined with the bubble-like appearance of the galaxies and the superheated gas seen with Chandra observations (represented in purple), inspired the […]
NASA IXPE’s Longest Observation Solves Black Hole Jets Mystery
Written by Michael Allen An international team of astronomers using NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) has identified the origin of X-rays in a supermassive black hole’s jet, answering a question that has been unresolved since the earliest days of X-ray astronomy. Their findings are described in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, […]
Mapping Dark Matter
This image released on June 30, 2025, combines data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to visualize dark matter. Researchers used Webb’s observations to carefully measure the mass of the galaxy clusters shown here as well as the collective light emitted by stars that are no longer bound to individual […]
Hubble Snaps Galaxy Cluster’s Portrait
A massive, spacetime-warping cluster of galaxies is the setting of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxy cluster in question is Abell 209, located 2.8 billion light-years away in the constellation Cetus (the Whale). This Hubble image of Abell 209 shows more than a hundred galaxies, but there’s more to this cluster than even Hubble’s discerning […]
Hubble Snaps Galaxy Cluster’s Portrait
A massive, spacetime-warping cluster of galaxies is the setting of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxy cluster in question is Abell 209, located 2.8 billion light-years away in the constellation Cetus (the Whale). This Hubble image of Abell 209 shows more than a hundred galaxies, but there’s more to this cluster than even […]
Galaxy Clusters on Course to Crash Again, NASA’s Chandra Finds
New observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes have captured a rare cosmic event: two galaxy clusters have collided and are now poised to head back for another swipe at each other. Galaxy clusters are some of the largest structures in the Universe. Held together by gravity, they are monster-sized collections of hundreds […]