Chandra Release - February 27, 2020

Visual Description: Ophiuchus Galaxy Cluster

This image of the galaxy cluster Ophiuchus features a bright purple and blue glow in the center, surrounded by a dark background, like a multicolored blobby squid floating up in a dark sea with tiny white bits of light. The colors are vibrant and intense, reminiscent of neon lighting
The hot gas that pervades clusters like Ophiuchus gives off much of its light as X-rays. The main panel graphic contains X-rays from XMM-Newton (pink) along with radio data from GMRT (blue), and infrared data from 2MASS (white). In an inset at lower right, Chandra X-ray Observatory data show a close up of the core area in pink with a dark cavity at the lower left part of the close up. In the center of the Ophiuchus cluster is a large galaxy containing a supermassive black hole. Researchers have traced the source of this gigantic eruption to jets that blasted away from the black hole and carved out a large cavity in the hot gas. Radio emission from electrons accelerated to almost the speed of light fills this cavity, providing evidence that an eruption of unprecedented size took place.