Chandra Release - December 18, 2014

Visual Description: il Gioiello Cluster

The composite image features the Gioiello Cluster, a galaxy cluster located over 9 billion light years away. The cluster is dominated by bright red and purple colors, with bright blue dots and a few white and yellow dots scattered throughout the image, like a drift of tiny jewels sparkling on a black tablecloth.  The Gioiello Cluster is characterized by its irregular shape, which resembles an elongated oval. This distant and massive galaxy cluster is officially known as XDCP J0044.0-2033. Researchers, however, nicknamed it "Gioiello", which is Italian for "jewel". They chose this name because the image of the cluster contains many sparkling colors from the hot, X-ray emitting gas and various star-forming galaxies within the cluster. In this image of the Gioiello Cluster, X-rays from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are colored purple, infrared data from ESA's Hershel Space Telescope appear as large red halos around some galaxies, and optical data from the Subaru telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii are red, green, and blue.