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Phoenix Cluster

Adapted from Wikipedia · Adventurer 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 (SPT-CL J2344-4243) is a very large group of galaxies called a galaxy cluster. It is found in the southern sky, in the area of the constellation called Phoenix.

Astronomers first found this cluster in 2010 using a special telescope at the South Pole called the South Pole Telescope. They used a method called the Sunyaev–Zeldovich effect to look at a large part of the sky.

The Phoenix Cluster is one of the biggest galaxy clusters known. It has a mass about 2,000,000,000,000 times the size of our Sun, written as 2×1015 M☉. It shines very brightly in a type of energy called X-rays. It is very far away, about 8.61 billion light-years from Earth.

Scientists have identified around 42 galaxies in the Phoenix Cluster using a database called SIMBAD. They think there might be as many as 1,000 galaxies there in total.

Discovery

The Phoenix Cluster was found during a big sky survey using the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica. It was one of 26 galaxy clusters found in the survey, and twelve of them were new discoveries. The Phoenix Cluster shines very brightly in X-rays. Near its center, scientists found a special type of galaxy called a type-2 Seyfert galaxy, named Phoenix A.

Characteristics

Artist's depiction of the center of the Phoenix Cluster, showing the central black hole and its accretion disc that fuels two powerful jets emanating from the nucleus

The Phoenix Cluster is very special because of its extreme properties. It has an extremely strong cooling flow, which means that material in the cluster is cooling very quickly. This cooling flow is one of the highest ever seen in the middle of a galaxy cluster.

The Phoenix Cluster also has the highest X-ray luminosity compared to other clusters. This means it gives off more X-ray light than any other known massive cluster. The central galaxy in the Phoenix Cluster, named Phoenix A, is forming new stars at a very fast rate.

Components

The central galaxy of the Phoenix Cluster is called Phoenix A. It is a very large and active galaxy. Its center is very bright and is called an active galactic nucleus. This bright center is powered by a supermassive black hole. Phoenix A is one of the largest galaxies known, stretching about 360,300 light-years across.

Phoenix A has a lot of hot gas and is making new stars very quickly—about 740 times the mass of our Sun every year. This is faster than in other big clusters of galaxies. The black hole at its center might be very big, possibly weighing as much as 100 billion times the mass of our Sun.

JWST observations

In 2025, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) discovered something new about the Phoenix Cluster. It found a special kind of gas that is the right temperature to help new stars form fast. This gas is hotter than the cool gas in the cluster but not as hot as the very warm gas. This discovery helps scientists learn more about how stars are born in groups of galaxies.

Images

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.

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