Chandra Release - June 24, 2014

Visual Description: Perseus Cluster

A Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the Perseus galaxy cluster is displayed, which features a dark pink and brown color scheme. The structure of the Perseus Cluster appears as  swirling clouds of gas and dust with a slight figure 8-shape at its core and a puff of dark blue filamentary material coming off of it, reminiscent of a fading tornado. An accumulation of over 400 hours of Chandra observations of the central regions of the Perseus galaxy cluster reveals evidence of the turmoil that has wracked the cluster for hundreds of millions of years. One of the most massive objects in the universe, the Perseus cluster contains thousands of galaxies immersed in a vast cloud of multimillion degree gas with the mass equivalent of trillions of suns.  Enormous bright loops, ripples, and jet-like streaks are also apparent in the image. The small dark blue filaments to the right in the center of the image are likely due to a galaxy that has been torn apart and is falling into NGC 1275, a.k.a. Perseus A, the giant galaxy that lies at the center of the cluster.  To the lower left is a plot in white and blue and reflects a study of the central region of the Perseus galaxy cluster that revealed a mysterious X-ray signal in the data. This signal is represented in circled data points in the inset, which is a plot of X-ray intensity as a function of X-ray energy.  This unidentified X-ray emission line - that is, a spike of intensity at a very specific energy, in this case centered on about 3.56 kiloelectron volts - requires further investigation to confirm both the signal's existence and nature.