Chandra Release - March 14, 2012

Visual Description: Abell 383

A galaxy cluster named Abell 383 is captured in X-ray and optical light in this image, which is dominated by a purple hazy cloud at the center and a dense sprinkling of white sources like holiday lights dropped in a cluster on the floor. In the center of the image, there is one bright white source, a galaxy, that stands out with many smaller sources, mostly other galaxies, dotted all around it.  Another bright source in blue-white stands off to the right of center and is a foreground star. X-ray data (colored purple) from Chandra in the composite image show the hot gas of the cluster, which is by far the dominant type of normal matter in the cluster. Galaxies are shown with the optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Telescope, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, colored in blue and white.