00:00Visit Chandra's Beautiful Universe
00:04NGC 4839
00:08A group of galaxies is plunging into
00:12the Koma galaxy cluster and leaving behind an extraordinary
00:16tale of superheated gas. Astronomers have confirmed
00:20this is the longest known tale behind a galaxy group and used it
00:24to gain a deeper understanding of how galaxy clusters, some of the
00:28largest structures in the universe, grow to their enormous sizes.
00:32Astronomers trained NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory
00:36on the galaxy group NGC 4839
00:40Galaxy groups are collections of about 50 galaxies or
00:44less that are bound together by gravity.
00:48Galaxy clusters are even larger and can contain hundreds or thousands
00:52of individual galaxies. Both galaxy clusters and
00:56galaxy groups are enveloped by huge amounts of hot gas
01:00that are best studied using X-rays.
01:02These superheated
01:04pools of gas, though extremely
01:06thin and diffuse, represent
01:08a significant portion of the mass
01:10in galaxy groups or clusters
01:12and are crucial for understanding these systems.
01:14NGC 4839 is located
01:18near the edge of the Koma galaxy cluster,
01:20one of the largest known clusters in the universe, about
01:24340 million light-years away.
01:26As NGC 4839 moves toward the center of the
01:30Koma cluster, the hot gas in the galaxy group is stripped away
01:34by its collision with gas in the cluster.
01:36This results in a tail forming behind the galaxy group.
01:40This comet-like tail is 1.5 million light-years long,
01:44or hundreds of thousands of times
01:46the distance between the sun and the nearest star,
01:48making it the longest tail ever seen trailing
01:52behind a group of galaxies.
01:54This gas is a key ingredient in making
01:56future generations of stars and planets.
01:58The current brightness of the tail gives astronomers a special chance
02:04to study the tail's gas before it mixes in with the hot gas in the cluster
02:08and becomes too faint to study.
02:10The gas in the tail behind NGC 4839
02:14will ultimately merge with the large amount
02:16of hot gas already present in the Koma cluster.
02:28The GEDERAL TORCHIN
02:30However, we've got this number of water
02:31in the M-O-N-D-C 4839
02:32to have the time to study the following
02:33the number of water at the M-O-N-D-C 4839
02:34is the number of water that's not really
02:35used to be from the M-O-N-D-C 4839
02:36and the R-HH that are in the middle of the M-O-N-D-C 4839
02:38is a huge amount of water that's not really
02:39used to be using this in the middle of the M-O-N-D-C 4839
02:40is of the M-O-N-D-C 4529
02:41to be using the M-O-N-D-C 4839
02:42if you want to maybe go to the M-O-N-D-C 4839
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