The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
This image shows a simulation of the Perseus galaxy cluster – one of the most massive known objects in the Universe. A new study based on observations from ESA’s XMM-Newton has spotted the first signs of this gas splashing and sloshing around within Perseus – a behaviour that, while predicted, had never been seen before.
These three simulated frames show the surface brightness of the cluster gas in X-rays (left), the velocity of the gas (middle), and the temperature of the gas (right).
The brightest gas is seen in shades of orange-yellow and the dimmest in dark purple and black (left); the bluest gas is the fastest moving towards us, the reddest gas is the fastest moving away from us (centre); and the hottest gas is in shades of lime and yellow, and the coolest in dark blue (right).
Full story: First sighting of hot gas sloshing in galaxy cluster
Note: This caption was updated on 20 February 2020.