Astronomers find record-breaking galaxy cluster [View all]

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Astronomers find record-breaking galaxy cluster

Wed Aug 15, 2012 7:42pm EDT

(Reuters) - A massive so-called galaxy cluster, one of the largest structures in the universe, has been discovered about 5.7 billion light years from Earth and credited with setting several important new cosmic records, U.S.-based researchers said on Wednesday.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in a news release that observations of the cluster, which has shown a prodigious rate of star formation, may force astronomers to rethink how such colossal structures and galaxies that inhabit them evolve over time.

Known officially by an alphabet soup of numbers and letters as SPT-CLJ2344-4243, the cluster has been nicknamed "Phoenix," after the mythological bird that rose from the dead.

That's partly due to the constellation in which it lies. But Michael McDonald, a Hubble fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the Phoenix was also a great way of thinking about the latest astronomical marvel.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/15/us-space-science-phoenix-idUSBRE87E1BO20120815