Galaxy cluster Abell 2256: a cosmic collision on a huge scale. Credit: ASTRON/R. J. van Weeren
An international team of astronomers has used the International LOFAR Telescope to study the formation of the galaxy cluster Abell 2256. This cluster of hundreds of galaxies, 800 million light years distant, turns out to be more complex than expected.
New, deep, low-frequency LOFAR observations of the cluster, made just before the Onsala station joined the network, show that Abell 2256 is probably a merger of two or more galaxy clusters. For more details, see the paper by van Weeren et al., either at ASTRON or on ArXiv.
You can read the press release in Swedish at Onsala Space Observatory or in English at ASTRON.
