Galaxy Cluster SDSS J1531+3414

This is a Hubble Space Telescope photograph of a never-before-seen string of pearls twisted into a corkscrew shape that winds around the cores of two colliding galaxies. The "pearls" are superclusters of blazing, blue-white, newly born stars. The whole assembly must result from the gravitational tidal forces present in the galaxy collision. The serendipitous discovery was made while astronomers were studying the galaxy cluster SDSS J1531+3414.

The underlying physics behind the "beads on a string" shape is related to describing the behavior of self-gravitating clumps of gas. It's analogous to the process where rain falls in drops rather than in continuous filaments from clouds. It's called the Jeans instability, and it can play out on distance scales of enormous orders of magnitude.

About the colours

This composite image includes exposures acquired by the WFC3 instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope. Several filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F390W (C) Cyan: F606W (V) Yellow: F814W (I) Red: F160W (H)

About the data

The image was created from Hubble data from proposal 13003 : M. Gladders (University of Chicago), J. Rigby (NASA/GSFC), E. Wuyts (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching), K. Sharon (University of Michigan), M. Bayliss (Harvard University), H. Dahle (University of Oslo), and J. Hennawi (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg).

The science team comprises: M. Gladders, M. Florian (University of Chicago), S. Baum, C. O'Dea, K. Cooke (Rochester Institute of Technology), M. Bayliss (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), H. Dahle (University of Oslo, Norway), T. Davis (European Southern Observatory), J. Rigby (NASA/GSFC), K. Sharon (University of Michigan), E. Soto (Catholic University), and E. Wuyts (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching).