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Description

Temperature animation
Movie (1.5 MB)

AUDIO:
None.

VIDEO:
This animation details what the scientists are calling the perfect cosmic storm: galaxy clusters that collided like two high-pressure weather fronts and created hurricane-like conditions, tossing galaxies far from their paths and churning shock waves of 100-million-degree gas through intergalactic space. The animation shows only inter-cluster gas; most of the cluster's mass is "free" gas, not galaxies.

 

A service of the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), Dr. Andy Ptak (Director), within the Astrophysics Science Division (ASD) at NASA/GSFC

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