Chandra Release - January 8, 2002

Visual Description: Abell 2597

The X-ray image of the cluster of galaxies Abell 2597 has the brightest area in the center of the image that stands out with its intense glow. The overall texture of the image appears somewhat mottled or blobby, with varying degrees of brightness across the surface.  The color palette of the image is dominated by shades of orange and yellow. In Chandra’s X-ray view, this galaxy cluster shows a vast cloud of hot gas with two dark cavities -- located in the upper left and lower right – about 100,000 light years from the bright center of the cluster. These so-called ghost cavities are thought to be 100 million-year-old relics of an ancient eruption that originated around a massive black hole in the core of a centrally located galaxy. Though dim, the ghost cavities are not completely empty. They contain a mixture of very hot gas, high-energy particles, and magnetic fields (otherwise the cavities would have collapsed under the pressure of the surrounding hot gas.) As they rise through the hot gas like air bubbles in water, the ghost cavities may transport magnetic fields to the cluster gas from a disk surrounding a giant black hole.