Abell 2142 facts for kids
Abell 2142 is a giant group of galaxies that shines brightly in X-rays. It is found in the constellation called Corona Borealis. This huge cluster formed when two big groups of galaxies crashed into each other.
The combined cluster is incredibly vast, stretching six million light years wide. It contains hundreds of galaxies and enough gas to create thousands more. Scientists consider Abell 2142 to be one of the biggest and heaviest things we know of in the universe.
Seeing Abell 2142 in X-Rays
The image you see on the right was taken in 1999 by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. This special telescope looks at X-rays from space. The image shows a giant cosmic "weather system" created by the collision of two huge galaxy clusters.
For the first time, scientists could see how the pressure changed within this system in great detail. The image reveals a bright, cooler center (white) that is about 50 million degrees Celsius. This is surrounded by a larger, stretched-out cloud of hotter gas (magenta) at 70 million degrees Celsius. Even hotter gas (faint magenta and dark blue) forms a faint "atmosphere" around it, reaching 100 million degrees Celsius. The bright spot in the top left of the image is an active galaxy located within the cluster.
Cool Facts About Abell 2142
Abell 2142 is listed in the Abell catalogue. This is a list of rich galaxy clusters first put together by astronomer George O. Abell in 1958.
- Moving Away: Abell 2142 has a redshift of 0.0909. This means it is moving away from us very quickly, at about 27,250 kilometers per second (that's over 60 million miles per hour!).
- How Bright It Looks: Its visual magnitude is 16.0. This number tells us how bright an object appears from Earth. A higher number means it looks fainter. Since 16.0 is quite high, Abell 2142 is very dim and cannot be seen without a powerful telescope.
- Distance: This galaxy cluster is incredibly far away, about 1.2 billion light years from Earth. That's 380 megaparsecs!
See Also
- Galaxy cluster
- X-ray astronomy
