Astronomers Discover the Musket Ball Cluster, a System of Colliding Galaxy Clusters
Posted on April 13, 2012
Astronomers have announced the discovery of the Musket Ball cluster, a system of colliding galaxy clusters. The newly discovered galaxy cluster is called DLSCL J0916.2+2951. It is similar to the Bullet Cluster, the first system in which the separation of dark and normal matter was observed. The newly discovered system has been nicknamed the Musket Ball Cluster because the cluster collision is older and slower than the Bullet Cluster.
The astronomers say normal matter has been wrenched apart from dark matter through a violent collision between two galaxy clusters. The system is observed about 700 million years after the collision. It is located about 5.2 billion light years away from Earth.
In the composite image, the hot gas observed with Chandra is colored red, and the galaxies in the optical image from Hubble appear as mostly white and yellow. The location of the majority of the matter in the cluster (dominated by dark matter) is colored blue. When the red and the blue regions overlap, the result is purple as seen in the image. The matter distribution, determined by using data from Subaru, Hubble and the Mayall telescope, reveals the effects of gravitational lensing, an effect predicted by Einstein where large masses can distort the light from distant objects.
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