20 trillion solarmass hot cloud going 750 clicks

[marcus]

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0505036

http://www.universetoday.com/2006/06/12/gigantic-ball-of-fire-discovered/

the popular news item says "gigantic-ball-of-fire-discovered" heh heh

it is a gas cloud in the cluster Abell 3266 which is hot enough to be observed in Xray wavelengths----ie on order of million kelvin

and has been estimated (in that and in the technical article linked to) as about 3 million lightyears diameter with mass of 2 x 10¹³ solar masses. that is 20 trillion, compare this to the Andromeda galaxy whose mass is about 1 trillion.

the apparent diameter of the Abell 3266 cloud in the sky is about half the diameter of the full moon.

would be a nice sight for us to see if we had Xray eyes
==========

the observers are happy because, as they say, it let's them glimpse STRUCTURE FORMATION IN PROGRESS
they get to see the processes by which clusters of galaxies form

they estimate the thing is traveling 750 kilometers per second---quite fast.

 

[matt.o]

750 km/s is fairly average for a cluster merger. In fact major merger velocites are generally of order 1-2000 km/s. The dispersion of the galaxy velocities in a cluster is about 500-1200 km/s.

Search for the bullet cluster (1E0657-56) on arxiv or google to find an example of an extremely interesting cluster merger.

 

[marcus]

750 km/s is fairly average for a cluster merger. In fact major merger velocites are generally of order 1-2000 km/s. The dispersion of the galaxy velocities in a cluster is about 500-1200 km/s.

Search for the bullet cluster (1E0657-56) on arxiv or google to find an example of an extremely interesting cluster merger.

thanks matt!
appreciate the tip