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
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An view of the Abell 2384 system, comprising two galaxy clusters located 1.2 billion light years from Earth, based on radio waves observations from the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India.
The two clusters, comprising each many galaxies, vast amounts of hot gas even larger amounts of unseen dark matter, are linked by a three million light-year long bridge of hot gas that shines brightly in X-rays, which has been observed with ESA's XMM-Newton and NASA's Chandra X-ray observatories (not visible in this image).
A new study based on multi-wavelength analysis of this system reveals the effects of a jet (visible in the radio data) shooting away from a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy in one of the clusters.
More information: A bent bridge between two galaxy clusters