Universe Today » Archive » Gigantic Ball of Fire Discovered
An international team of astronomers have discovered a massive gas ball hurtling through a distant galaxy cluster. This ball of gas is traveling more than 750 km/second (466 miles/second) through galaxy cluster Abell 3266. The enormous speed and pressure has heated the gas up to the point that it blazes in the X-ray spectrum. The discovery was made using ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray satellite.
but this is truly awesome…
The gas ball is about three million light years across, or about five thousand million times the size of our solar system. It appears from our perspective as a circular X-ray glow with a comet-like tail nearly half the size of the moon.
