#Repost @nasa ・・・
Galactic Ribbon Unfurled: An extraordinary ribbon of hot gas trailing behind a galaxy like a tail has been discovered using data from our Chandra X-ray Observatory. This ribbon, or X-ray tail, is likely due to gas stripped from the galaxy as it moves through a vast cloud of hot intergalactic gas. With a length of at least 250,000 light years, it is likely the largest such tail ever detected. In this new composite image, X-rays from Chandra (blue) have been combined with data in visible light from the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (yellow) in the Canary Islands, Spain. The tail is located almost 700 million light years from Earth. The length of the tail is more than twice the diameter of the entire Milky Way galaxy. The tail contains gas at temperatures of about ten million degrees, about twenty million degrees cooler than the intergalactic gas, but still hot enough to glow brightly in X-rays that Chandra can detect.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/University of Bonn/G. Schellenberger et al; Optical: INT
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