00:01Visit Chandra's Beautiful Universe
00:06NGC 4839
00:09A 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
00:27largest 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
00:43or less that are bound together by gravity.
00:47Galaxy clusters are even larger and can contain hundreds or thousands
00:51of individual galaxies. Both galaxy clusters and
00:55galaxy groups are enveloped by huge amounts of hot gas
00:59that are best studied using X-rays.
01:02These superheated
01:03pools of gas, though extremely
01:05thin and diffuse, represent
01:08a significant portion of the mass
01:09and galaxy groups or clusters
01:11and are crucial for understanding these systems.
01:16NGC 4839 is located near the edge of the Koma galaxy cluster,
01:20one of the largest known clusters in the universe, about 340
01:24million light-years away.
01:26As NGC 4839 moves toward the center of the Koma cluster,
01:30the hot gas in the galaxy group is stripped away by its collision
01:34with gas in the cluster. This 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 the distance between the Sun and the nearest star,
01:49making it the longest tail ever seen trailing behind a group of galaxies.
01:53This gas is a key ingredient in making future generations of stars and planets.
01:59The current brightness of the tail gives astronomers a special chance to study the tail's gas
02:05before it mixes in with the hot gas in the cluster and becomes too faint to study.
02:10The gas in the tail behind NGC 4839
02:13will ultimately merge with the large amount of hot gas already present in the Koma cluster.
02:31The gas in the�� T
02:32in the air share is a very important aspect of the stars.
02:34The energy of theар shell is 32 кадnu that persists were политванized under towards the revs.
Comments