SPT-CL J0546-5345 Is The Most Massive Galaxy Cluster Yet Discovered
Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - 10:50
in Astronomy & Space
What's 7 billion light years away, weighs 800,000,000,000,000 of ours Suns and holds hundreds of galaxies? It's the most galaxy cluster ever discovered. Astronomers using the South Pole Telescope discovered the behemoth and designated it the rather unspectacular SPT-CL J0546-5345. Redshift measures how light from a distant object has been stretched by the universe's expansion. Located in the southern constellation Pictor (the Painter), the cluster has a redshift of z=1.07. This puts it at a distance of about 7 billion light-years, meaning we see it as it appeared 7 billion years ago, when the universe was half as old as now and our solar system didn't exist yet. read more