PIA16466: Bridging Cities of Galaxies
 Mission:  Planck
 Instrument:  Planck Space Telescope 
 Product Size:  3564 x 3571 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  European Space Agency (ESA)
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA16466.tif (38.2 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA16466.jpg (1.518 MB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

Planck has discovered a bridge of hot gas that connects galaxy clusters Abell 399 (lower center) and Abell 401 (top left). The galaxy pair is located about a billion light-years from Earth, and the gas bridge extends approximately 10 million light-years between them.

The image shows the two galaxy clusters as seen at optical wavelengths with ground-based telescopes and through the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (in orange) with the Planck satellite.

Planck is a European Space Agency mission, with significant participation from NASA. NASA's Planck Project Office is based at JPL. European, Canadian and U.S. Planck scientists work together to analyze the Planck data. More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/planck and http://www.esa.int/planck.

Image Credit:
Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect: ESA Planck Collaboration; optical image: STScI Digitized Sky Survey

Image Addition Date:
2012-11-21