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Phoenix Cluster

Adapted from Wikipedia · Explorer experience

A colorful space image showing the Phoenix Cluster, a group of galaxies, with blue areas representing X-ray data and red/green/blue areas showing optical light from stars and gas.

The Phoenix Cluster is a giant group of galaxies floating in space. It lives in a part of the sky called the constellation Phoenix. Imagine a huge bunch of stars and galaxies all holding hands — that’s what a galaxy cluster is like!

Astronomers first saw the Phoenix Cluster in 2010. They used a special telescope at the South Pole called the South Pole Telescope to find it. This telescope looks at the sky in a clever way called the Sunyaev–Zeldovich effect. The Phoenix Cluster is very far away — about 8.61 billion light-years from Earth!

This cluster is one of the biggest we know. It has a mass about 2,000,000,000,000 times the size of our Sun! It shines very brightly in energy called X-rays. Scientists think there might be as many as 1,000 galaxies hiding inside it.

In 2025, a amazing telescope called the James Webb Space Telescope found something special in the Phoenix Cluster. It discovered a type of gas that helps new stars be born quickly. This helps scientists understand how stars grow up in big groups of galaxies. The Phoenix Cluster is a wonderful place full of stars and galaxies to explore!

Images

Artist's view of a galaxy in the Phoenix Cluster, showing powerful jets and gas clouds that may help create new stars.
A stunning view of the Seyfert 2 galaxy located in the constellation Phoenix, captured by the DESI Legacy Surveys.
An artist’s view of the exoplanet J1407b as seen from one of its hypothetical moons.
An artist’s view of a beautiful sunset on a distant planet, with bright stars shining in the sky.
A self-portrait of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity taken on the red planet, documenting its first drilling site on Mars.
Astronauts aboard Apollo 8 saw this beautiful view of Earth rising over the lunar horizon during their historic mission in 1968.

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on Phoenix Cluster, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Images from Wikimedia Commons. Tap any image to view credits and license.