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.