Buy this Abell 2597 space photo. High quality Chandra picture, slide, or Duratrans backlit transparency. NASA photo Abell 2597. Wide variety of sizes. Abell 2597 - A cluster of galaxies about a billion light years from Earth, located in the constellation Aquarius. The Chandra image of Abell 2597 revealed a vast cloud of hot gas with two dark cavities - upper left and lower right - about 100,000 light years from the bright center of the cluster. These so-called ghost cavities are thought to be 100 million-year-old relics of an ancient eruption that originated around a supermassive black hole in the core of a centrally located galaxy. Though dim, the cavities contain a mixture of very hot gas, high-energy particles, and magnetic fields - otherwise they would have collapsed under the pressure of the surrounding hot gas. If dozens of these cavities were created over the life of the cluster, they could explain the surprisingly January 08, 2002 Credits: NASA/CXC/Ohio U/B.McNamara et al. CXC operated for NASA by Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory |