Chandra Release - September 11, 2008

Visual Description: Abell 1689

The image is a composite of an X-ray and optical view of Abell 1689, a massive cluster of galaxies.  The dominant colors in the image are blue-purple and white-gold, with large amounts of bright spots scattered throughout the image like an overly excited holiday decorator has been to work.  In the center of the image, there is a bright core of large white sources that stand out from the rest of the galaxy cluster.  The cluster looks to be bathed in the bright blue-purple light. Abell 1689 shows signs of merging activity. Hundred-million-degree gas is detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (the blue-purple in this image), while galaxies from optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope are colored white-gold. The X-ray emission has a smooth appearance, forming a large sphere across and around the galaxies. Long bright arcs in the optical image are caused by gravitational lensing of background galaxies by matter in the galaxy cluster, the largest system of such arcs ever found at the time of observation.