Astronomers catch hot birth of galaxy cluster more than 11 billion light-years away
Astronomers have detected an enormous cloud of gas tens of millions of degrees hot surrounding one of the most extreme structures known in the early universe. The study offers one of the clearest views yet of a galaxy cluster in the making. Using more than 600,000 seconds of observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the team found diffuse, extended X-ray emission around a quasar…
Astronomers have discovered a massive cloud of hot gas surrounding a quasar in the early universe, more than 11 billion light-years away. The team, led by Andrea Travascio from the University of Milano-Bicocca, used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to observe the region. They found X-ray emission extending at least 98,000 light-years from the quasar, indicating the presence of a hot, diffuse gas with a temperature of around 21 million Kelvin.
This hot gas, estimated at 2.6 trillion times the mass of the Sun, constitutes about 56% of the total normal matter in the region. The discovery suggests that even in the early universe, galaxy clusters were already forming, containing up to 56% of the baryonic matter expected in their halos.
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