X-ray & Optical Images of Abell 383
Two teams of astronomers have used data from Chandra and other telescopes to map the distribution of dark matter in three dimensions in the galaxy cluster Abell 383. The dark matter in Abell 383 is stretched out like a gigantic football with the point of the football aligned close to the line of sight. The X-ray data from Chandra show the hot gas, which is by far the dominant type of normal matter in the cluster. Galaxies are shown with the optical data from the Hubble, the Very Large Telescope, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
(Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Caltech/A.Newman et al/Tel Aviv/A.Morandi & M.Limousin; Optical: NASA/STScI, ESO/VLT, SDSS)