Chandra Release - April 16, 2009

Visual Description: MACSJ0717.5+3745

The composite image of the galaxy cluster MACSJ0717.5+3745 is a pretty combination of textures, colors, and forms in space.  At the center of the image, there is a bright royal blue, magenta and lavender colored nebula, resembling conjoined crabs if they were made of colorful clouds.  The soft shape is surrounded by a dense pack of lit up galaxies and foreground stars sparkling like white and gold glitter across the black sky. This composite image shows the massive galaxy cluster MACSJ0717 where four separate galaxy clusters have been involved in a collision. Hot gas is shown in an image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (in blues and purples) and galaxies are shown in an optical image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (white and gold). The hot X-ray gas is color-coded to show temperature. The coolest gas is shown as magenta, the hottest gas is blue and the temperatures in between are lavender.