| 18th of December 2020 |
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| Gas filament in the Abell 3391/95 galaxy cluster system |
| by Reiprich et al. |
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Researchers from Western Sydney University, Macquarie University, and
CSIRO, have contributed to the first observation of a gas filament
with a length of 50 million light years – confirming current ideas
about the origin and evolution of the Universe. Published in
Astronomy & Astrophysics, this research, led by the University of
Bonn, made use of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder
(ASKAP) radio telescope and the new eROSITA X-ray satellite. Ray
Norris from Western Sydney University commented: “These observations
of a system of galaxy clusters 700 million light years away from us
detect a gaseous filament of the cosmic web, which is thought to
pervade the Universe, but has so far eluded our telescopes,” Professor
Norris said.
The image above shows a portion of the ASKAP/EMU Early Science observation of the A3391/95 system overlaid on the eROSITA wavelet-filtered image. The Brightest Cluster Galaxy of A3395s, S1, is evident, together with an interesting faint extended radio source, S2/S3, which may be a radio relic, or be due to re-accelerated relativistic plasma related to a radio AGN. |