Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MPE/J.Sanders et al, Optical: SDSS

Enormous arms of hot gas have been revealed in the Coma galaxy cluster in data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton. A specially processed Chandra image (pink) has been combined with optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (white and blue) to highlight these spectacular arms. Researchers think that these arms -- which span at least a half million light years -- were most likely formed when smaller galaxy clusters had their gas stripped away by the head wind created by the motion of the clusters through the hot gas.

Provider: Chandra X-ray Observatory

Image Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/coma/

Curator: Chandra X-ray Observatory, Cambridge, MA, USA

Image Use Policy: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/image_use.html