Monstrous Coma Cluster Devours Nearby Galactic Groups, Causes Record-Breaking Tail of Hot Gas

A massive cluster of galaxies consumed the galactic group near it. The incident caused an explosive record-breaking tail of hot gas from its rear.

Galaxy Group Blasts Out Record-Breaking Tail of Hot Gas

A neighboring smaller galaxy grouping is being devoured by a gigantically huge cluster of galaxies, causing it to eject a record-breaking tail of hot gas from its back. The tail is the longest tendril of gas ever detected emerging from a galaxy clump, measuring 1.5 million light-years long, Space.com reported.

The gas tail behind NGC 4839 was previously observed by astronomers. Still, their estimates put its length at just about one million light-years, which is more in line with the average length of gas tails detected around objects of a similar nature, typically between 800,000 and one million light-years.

However, observations of the feeding cluster and its unfortunate cosmic prey with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes didn't just demonstrate that the tail is a cosmic record breaker. They may also help scientists understand how these massive clusters of galaxies form.

Astronomers may learn more about the mechanisms involved in galaxy group mergers from the Coma cluster's absorption of NGC 4839. The galaxy group is losing its gas envelope as it collides with the hot gases of the larger cluster as it travels to the cluster's core that is consuming it. The enormous gas tail behind NGC 4839, which is hot enough to glow brightly, is being produced by this violent process.

Astronomers have a rare opportunity to investigate the physics involved in such events thanks to the brightness of the tail, which is luminous enough to reach between the sun and the closest star to our solar system and back again hundreds of thousands of times. Before cooling and becoming too faint to be seen, the tail mixes with the enormous gas reservoir of the Coma cluster.

The scientists examined the gas in front of NGC 4839. They discovered shock waves that suggest the galaxy grouping travels into the Coma cluster at roughly 3 million miles per hour (4.8 million km/h), or about 4,000 times the speed of sound.

The scientists also looked at the amount of turbulence in the tail of the gas, which revealed that NGC 4839 has limited heat conduction. The scientists discovered Kelvin-Helmholtz's instabilities-structures on one side of the gas-while monitoring the tail. The presence of either a weak magnetic field or a low level of tail viscosity, which is a measure of how well a fluid resists flowing (water has a lower viscosity than molasses, for example), is indicated by these instabilities, which are frequently brought on by adjacent layers moving gas or fluid traveling at different speeds.

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What Is Coma Cluster?

A coma cluster is an array of galaxies with thousands of systems. It lies about 330 million light-years away and seven times farther than the Virgo cluster toward the Coma Berenices constellation.

The Coma cluster, located around 340 million light-years away from Earth, is one of the largest galactic clusters known to astronomers containing about 1,000 individual galaxies. The cluster is steadily growing as another galaxy group, called NGC 4839, is falling into it at millions of miles per hour.

Galactic groups like NGC 4839 contain around 50 galaxies, while galactic clusters like the Coma cluster can contain hundreds or even thousands of galaxies, according to a statement from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. One thing these different-sized collections of galaxies have in common is the huge amounts of superheated gas that envelop them. Though nebulous and diffuse, these clouds of gas still account for a great deal of the mass in both galaxy clusters and groups, which means studying this gas is vital in understanding them.

The results of the study were published on the open-source research repository ArXiv.