Chaos in the Cluster
Abell 3667 is a colossal, merging galaxy cluster in the constellation Pavo, lying about 0.8 billion light-years away. At its crowded core, giant elliptical galaxies dominate, glowing within a faint halo of intracluster light—the stripped remains of stars torn free in countless encounters. Spirals still linger on the outskirts, their delicate disks contrasting against the smoother ellipticals, but even these show signs of tidal stretching and distortion, caught in the immense gravitational upheaval.
This system is renowned for its spectacular twin radio relics, vast merger shock fronts blazing in radio wavelengths, and for a sharp X-ray cold front, one of the most striking ever detected. Recent DECam studies also revealed a faint intracluster-light bridge linking the two brightest cluster galaxies, a vivid signature of the ongoing collision.
Abell 3667 is a portrait of cosmic turmoil—galaxies colliding and transforming, stars cast adrift, and faint bridges of light binding together one of the busiest and most turbulent clusters in the southern sky.
Imaged in LRGB on my Planewave CDK 1000 at Observatorio El Sauce, Chile.
Image acquisition and processing: Mike Selby
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