Chandra Release - December 13, 2011

Visual Description: Abell 2052

The X-ray and optical image of the cluster of galaxies Abell 2052 features a bright, blue spiral shape in the center, surrounded by various points of golden light like galaxies and stars around it. The blue spiral dominates the center of the image. It does not resemble a compact spiral galaxy, but rather a shimmering object with a fuzzy spiral tail wrapping tightly at 4 o’clock and dissipating by 12 o’clock. Like wine in a glass, vast clouds of hot gas are sloshing back and forth in Abell 2052, a galaxy cluster located about 480 million light years from Earth. X-ray data (blue) from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the hot gas in this dynamic system, and optical data (gold) from the Very Large Telescope shows the galaxies. The hot, X-ray bright gas has an average temperature of about 30 million degrees. This huge spiral structure in the hot gas - spanning almost a million light years - is seen around the outside of the image, surrounding a giant elliptical galaxy at the center. This spiral was created when a small cluster of galaxies smashed into a larger one that surrounds the central elliptical galaxy.