The Perseus Cluster's X-Ray Skull
Credit:
A. Fabian
(IoA Cambridge) et al.,
NASA
This haunting image from the orbiting
Chandra Observatory
reveals the Perseus Cluster of Galaxies
in x-rays,
photons with a thousand or more times the energy of visible light.
Three hundred twenty million light-years distant, the
Perseus Cluster
contains thousands of galaxies, but none of them are
seen here.
Instead of mere galaxies, a fifty million degree cloud of
intracluster gas, itself more
massive than all the cluster's galaxies
combined, dominates the x-ray view.
From this angle, voids and bright knots in the
x-ray hot gas cloud lend it a very
suggestive appearance.
Like eyes in a skull, two dark bubbles flank a bright central source
of x-ray emission.
A third elongated bubble (at about 5 o'clock) forms a toothless mouth.
The bright x-ray source is likely a supermassive black hole at the
cluster center with the bubbles blown by explosions of
energetic particles ejected from the black hole and expanding into
the immense gas cloud.
Fittingly, the dark spot forming the skull's "nose" is an
x-ray shadow ... the shadow of a large galaxy inexorably falling into
the cluster center.
Over a hundred thousand light-years across, the Perseus Cluster's
x-ray skull is a bit larger than skulls you
may see tonight.
Have a safe and happy Halloween!