Enormous structure discovered near doomed galaxy group is the longest galactic ‘tail’ ever seen

Like comets and cats, clusters of galaxies generally have lengthy tails. Just lately, astronomers have discovered that these tails can span staggering distances, with one newly found tail stretching greater than one million light-years lengthy — or longer than 10 Milky Approach galaxies lined up facet to facet. 

The invention started when a workforce of scientists pointed NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory at a cluster of galaxies — round 50 galaxies certain collectively by gravity — referred to as NGC 4839. This group is merging with the a lot bigger Coma Cluster, a dense stellar formation some 340 million light-years from Earth, which accommodates over 1,000 tightly-bunched galaxies.