Raise a toast to another orbit around the sun with a new NASA image of sparkling galaxy clusters fittingly dubbed the “Champagne Cluster.”
The object was first discovered on December 31, 2020. But the new image combines data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory—which sees the superheated gas of the merging clusters as purple bubbles—and a collection of ground-based optical telescopes that contribute the starry background.
When the Champagne Cluster was first observed, astronomers thought the celestial object—formally named RM J130558.9+263048.4—was a single galaxy cluster, but subsequent observations have revealed that it is in fact two clusters interacting. All told, the merger involves more than 100 galaxies—plus enough multimillion-degree gas to outweigh them all.
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Scientists have two theories to explain the Champagne Cluster’s distinct appearance. Both of them were outlined in research published earlier this year in the Astrophysical Journal.
The first hypothesis is that the two clusters first collided more than two billion years ago, blowing past each other before being trapped in a gravitational dance that will eventually see them smash together again. According to the second theory, the clusters’ collision happened just 400 million years ago, and the two objects are now zipping away from each other. Either way, the researchers say, the clusters crashed into each other practically head-on.
The Champagne Cluster is a particularly interesting object for astronomers looking to understand dark matter, which is invisible to all telescopes but exerts a gravitational tug on everything around it. Scientists believe this enigmatic stuff is unlikely to interact with itself—and massive collisions between galaxy clusters such as the Champagne Cluster or a similar object dubbed the Bullet Cluster could be just the place to spot its strange behavior.