Simulation of sloshing gas in the Perseus galaxy cluster
Date: 10 January 2020
Satellite: XMM-Newton
Copyright: Courtesy of J. Zuhone, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
This image shows a simulation of the Perseus galaxy cluster – one of the most massive known objects in the Universe. A new study based on observations from ESA's XMM-Newton has spotted the first signs of this gas splashing and sloshing around within Perseus – a behaviour that, while predicted, had never been seen before.
These three simulated frames show the surface brightness of the cluster gas in X-rays (left), the temperature of the gas (middle), and the velocity of the gas (right). The values depicted in each frame are represented in the colour-scaled bar atop each box: the brightest gas is seen in shades of orange-yellow and the dimmest in dark purple and black (left); the hottest gas is in dark red and the coolest in dark blue (centre); and the fastest gas is in shades of lime and yellow, while the slowest is dark blue (right).
Full story: First sighting of hot gas sloshing in galaxy cluster
