NASA's Chandra Observatory Spots Galaxy Clusters' Collision

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory spotted a collision of galactic clusters as well as a resulting shockwave.

Abell 2146 is a pair of colliding galaxy clusters located nearly 2.8 billion light-years from our planet. Galaxy clusters contain hundreds of galaxies along with huge amounts of dark matter and hot gas. Collisions between such space objects can release tremendous amounts of energy, providing scientists with physical laboratories that cannot be recreated on Earth.

The gigantic shockwave caused by the collision of the two galaxies is as much as 1.6 million light-years long. In the image, Chandra was able to detect the hot gas as it operates in the X-ray range (violer), while Subaru Telescope optical data shows galaxies (white and red).

Chandra X-ray Observatory observed Abell 2146 for about 23 days in total.