These features span at least half a million light years, NASA writes, offering insight into how the Coma cluster has matured through mergers of smaller groups and clusters of galaxies to become one of the largest structures in the universe held together by gravity.
NASA adds, “Researchers think that these arms were most likely formed when smaller galaxy clusters had their gas stripped away by the head wind created by the motion of the cluster through the hot gas, in much the same way that the headwind created by a roller coaster blows the hats off riders.”
Also, this data confirms the many galaxies in the Coma Cluster, which contain only about one-sixth the mass in hot gas.
Redorbit passes along more info about the image: “Two of the arms in Coma appear to be attached to a group of galaxies located about two million light years from the center of Coma, with one, or both, of these arms connecting to a larger structure seen in the XMM-Newton data. The arms span a distance of at least 1.5 million light years. As evidence of gas being stripped from a single galaxy, a very thin tail appears behind one of the galaxies in Coma.”
