El Gordo Galaxy Cluster, ACT-CL J0102-4915, Optical
The galaxy cluster ACT-CL J0102-4915, located about 7 billion light years from Earth has been nicknamed El Gordo (the fat one) because of its gigantic mass. Scientists first announced the discovery of El Gordo with Chandra and ground-based optical telescopes in 2012. They determined that El Gordo is the most massive, the hottest, and gives off the most X-rays of any known galaxy cluster at its distance or beyond. New data from the Hubble Space Telescope suggests El Gordo weighs as much as 3 million billion times the mass of our Sun. This is about 43 percent higher than the original estimate based on the X-ray data and dynamical studies. The new Hubble study determined that most of the mass is hidden away as dark matter. Because dark matter doesn't emit any radiation, astronomers instead precisely measure how its gravity warps the images of far background galaxies like a funhouse mirror. Like the Bullet Cluster, El Gordo is the site of two galaxy clusters running into each other at several million miles per hour. El Gordo is located over 7 billion light years from Earth, meaning that it is being observed at a young age. Release date April 3, 2014.
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Photo credit: © Photo Researchers / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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