Thursday, 10 March 2011

Extremely Young and Incredibly Old

here's my new story about a newly discovered cluster of galaxies, which is located in the young Universe but it is, surprisingly, already pretty old... enjoy :-)

An old galaxy cluster discovered in the young Universe

Astronomers working with data from several observatories, including ESA's XMM-Newton, have discovered the most distant, mature galaxy cluster yet. The cluster is seen as it was when the Universe was only about a quarter of its current age. In contrast to other structures observed in the young Universe, this object is already in its prime, as is evident from its diffuse X-ray emission and evolved population of galaxies. This shows that fully-grown galaxy clusters were already in place this early in cosmic history. More...

Image Credits: ESA/ESO/Subaru/R.Gobat et al.