Chandra Release - December 1, 2005

Visual Description: Perseus Cluster

The image features an X-ray view of a galaxy cluster, the Perseus Cluster, which is located about 250 million light-years away in the constellation Perseus.  The dominant colors in the image are shades of green and soft yellow.  The structure of the Perseus Cluster appears as  swirling clouds of gas and dust with a slight figure 8-shape at its core and a puff of dark blue filamentary material coming off of it, reminiscent of a fading tornado. An accumulation of 270 hours of Chandra observations of the central regions of the Perseus galaxy cluster reveals evidence of the turmoil that has wracked the cluster for hundreds of millions of years. One of the most massive objects in the universe, the cluster contains thousands of galaxies immersed in a vast cloud of multimillion degree gas with the mass equivalent of trillions of suns.  Enormous bright loops, ripples, and jet-like streaks are also apparent in the image. The dark blue filaments in the center are likely due to a galaxy that has been torn apart and is falling into NGC 1275, a.k.a. Perseus A, the giant galaxy that lies at the center of the cluster.