Clues to the Growth of the Colossus in Coma A team of astronomers has discovered enormous arms of hot gas in the Coma cluster of galaxies by using NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESAs XMM-Newton. These features which span at least half a million light years provide insight into how the Coma cluster has grown through mergers of smaller groups and clusters of galaxies to become one of the largest structures in the universe held together by gravity. A new composite image with Chandra data in pink and optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey appearing in white and blue features these spectacular arms. In this image the Chandra data have been processed so extra detail can be seen. The X-ray emission is from multimillion-degree gas and the optical data shows galaxies in the Coma Cluster which contain only about one-sixth the mass in hot gas. Only the brightest X-ray emission is shown here to emphasize the arms but the hot gas is present over the entire field of view. Researchers think that these arms were about feed OPEN

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