A Giant Stripping Process in the Galaxy Cluster A1644
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Image courtesy of T. Reiprich (University of Virginia & Bonn University) and ESA.
(for details, see Conditions of Use).
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About this Image
Abell 1644, located about 160 Million light years from the center of the Shapley supercluster, is a rather exceptional complex double cluster.
The figure on the left shows the X-ray surface brightness distribution (contours) and the
intracluster gas temperature distribution (blue = cool = 30 Million degrees and yellow/red = hot = 60 Million degrees) as obtained with data from
XMM-Newton. Note the cool trail that the upper subcluster appears to be leaving behind.
The figure on the right shows an image of a hydrodynamic simulation of what we think might have happened in A1644: a smaller subcluster has passed by the
main subcluster off-axis and a fraction of its gas has been stripped off during this process (darker = cooler temperature). This would
make A1644 the cluster exhibiting one of the largest scale stripping processes ever observed.
Investigator(s): T. Reiprich, C. Sarazin, J. Kempner, E. Tittley
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