Right now, astronomers are viewing a ball of hot gas billions of light years away that is radiating the energy of hundreds of billions of suns. At its heart is an object a little larger than 10 miles across. And astronomers are not entirely sure what it is. If, as they suspect, the gas ball is the result of a supernova, then it’s the most powerful supernova ever seen.
Read MoreNASA’s Great Observatories weigh massive young galaxy cluster
Astronomers have made the most detailed study yet of an extremely massive young galaxy cluster using three of NASA’s Great Observatories. This multiwavelength image shows this galaxy cluster, called IDCS J1426.5+3508, in X-rays recorded by Chandra in blue, visible light observed by Hubble in green, and infrared light detected by Spitzer in red. is so far away that the light detected is from when the universe was roughly a quarter of its current age. This is the most massive galaxy cluster detected at such an early age.
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