Chandra Release - February 05, 2008

Visual Description: NGC 1132

The X-ray and optical image of the elliptical galaxy NGC 1132 is a ghostly representation of celestial beauty.  In the center of the image, there is a bright blue-purple large spot of light surrounded by a larger diffuse cloud of purple. This is then speckled over by many small white, red and yellow dots, many tiny-seeming distant galaxies and foreground objects.  The contrast between the purple gaseous areas and the colored galaxies is reminiscent of a starry sky on a slightly hazy night.   This image of NGC 1132 and its surrounding region combines data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope. The blue/purple in the image is the X-ray glow from hot, diffuse gas detected by Chandra. Hubble's optical data in primarily white, yellow and red reveal a giant foreground elliptical galaxy, plus numerous dwarf galaxies in its neighborhood, and many much more distant galaxies in the background.  Astronomers have dubbed NGC 1132 a "fossil group" because it contains an enormous amount of dark matter, comparable to the dark matter found in an entire group of galaxies. Also, the large amount of hot gas detected by Chandra is usually found for groups of galaxies, rather than a single galaxy.