CL J1001+0220
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Université Paris/T.Wang et al;
Infrared: ESO/UltraVISTA; Radio: ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/ALMA
This image contains the most distant galaxy cluster, a discovery made using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and several other telescopes. The galaxy cluster, known as CL J1001+0220, is located about 11.1 billion light years from Earth and may have been caught right after birth, a brief, but important stage of cluster evolution never seen before.
The remote galaxy cluster was found in data from the COSMOS survey, a
project that observes the same patch of sky in many different kinds of light ranging from radio waves to X-rays.
This composite shows CL J1001+0220 (CL J1001, for short) in X-rays from
Chandra (purple), infrared data from ESO's UltraVISTA survey (red,
green, and blue), and radio waves from the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) (green). The diffuse X-ray
emission comes from a large amount of hot gas, one of the defining
elements of a galaxy cluster, as described in the press release.
In addition to its extraordinary distance, CL J1001 is remarkable
because of its high levels of star formation in galaxies near the center
of the cluster. Within about 250,000 light years of the center of the
cluster (its core), eleven massive galaxies are found and nine of those
display high rates of formation. Specifically, stars are forming in the
cluster core at a rate equivalent to about 3,400 Suns per year.
The large amount of growth through star formation in the galaxies in
CL J1001 distinguishes it from other galaxy clusters found at distances
of about 10 billion light years and closer, where little growth is
occurring. These results suggest that elliptical galaxies in clusters
may form their stars through more violent and shorter bursts of star
formation than elliptical galaxies outside clusters.
The latest study shows that CL 1001 galaxy cluster may be undergoing a
transformation from a galaxy cluster that is still forming, known as a
"protocluster," to a mature one. Astronomers have never found a galaxy
cluster at this precise stage. These results may also imply that star
formation slows down in large galaxies within clusters after the
galaxies have already come together during the development of a galaxy
cluster.
A paper describing these results appeared in The Astrophysical Journal on August 30, 2016 and is available online.
The authors were Tao Wang (French Alternative Energies and Atomic
Energy Commission, or CEA), David Elbaz (CEA), Emanuele Daddi (CEA),
Alexis Finoguenov (University of Helsinki), Daizhong Liu (Purple
Mountain Observatory, China), Veronica Strazzullo (Ludwig Maximillian
University of Munich), Francesco Valentino (CEA), Remco van der Burg
(CEA), Anita Zanella (CEA), Laure Ciesla (CEA), Raphael Gobat (Korean
Institute for Advanced Study), Amandine Le Brun (CEA), Maurillio
Pannella (Ludwig Maximillian University), Mark Sargent (University of
Sussex), Xinwen Shu (Anhui Normal University), Qinghua Tan (University
of Helsinki), Nico Cappelluti (Yale), and Yanxia Li (University of
Hawaii).
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages
the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.
Fast Facts for CL J1001:
Scale: Image is 2.17 arcmin across (about 4.36 million light years)
Category: Groups & Clusters of Galaxies, Cosmology/Deep Fields/X-ray Background
Coordinates (J2000): RA 10h 00m 56.96s | Dec +02° 20' 09.32"
Constellation: Sextans
Observation Date: 7 pointings between 19 Dec 2006 and 07 Apr 2007
Observation Time: 66 hours 7 min (2 days 18 hours 7 min)
Obs. ID: 7997, 8001, 8002, 8503, 8006, 8496, 8123
Instrument: ACIS
References: Wang, T. et al, 2016, ApJ (accepted); arXiv:1604.07404
Color Code: X-ray (Purple), Infrared (Red, Green, Blue), Radio (Green)
Distance Estimate: About 11.1 billion light years (z=2.506)
Source: NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory
