July 12, 2011
In the grand ledger of cosmic time, a human life is breathtakingly brief. But brevity is not insignificance.
The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies
Birthday · July 12, 2011
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APOD published July 12, 2011. Credit: Bob Franke. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on the sky. Each of these fuzzy blobs is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster, one of the closest clusters of galaxies. The cluster is seen through a foreground of faint stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy. Near the cluster center, roughly 250 million light-years away, is the cluster's dominant galaxy NGC 1275, seen above as a large galaxy on the image left. A prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission, NGC 1275 accretes matter as gas and galaxies fall into it. The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies, also cataloged as Abell 426, is part of the Pisces-Perseus supercluster spanning over 15 degrees and containing over 1,000 galaxies. At the distance of NGC 1275, this view covers about 15 million light-years.
Image credit: Bob Franke