Date: 31 May 2010
Satellite: XMM-Newton
Copyright: ESA/XMM-Newton; Background image: Blanco Cosmology Survey/NOAO/AURA/NSF; SZE contours: South Pole Telescope/NSF

X-ray emission (in pink) along with Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZE) contours (in white) of the massive galaxy cluster SPT-CL J2332-5358, overlaid on an optical g-, r- and i-band colour composite image.

The X-ray observations have been performed using XMM-Newton's new mosaic observing mode. The X-ray emission shown in the image corresponds to the 0.5-2.0 keV band.

The SZE contours, from the South Pole Telescope galaxy cluster catalogue, are superimposed on an optical pseudo-colour image from the Blanco Cosmology Survey.

The cluster has a mass of over 10¹⁵ solar masses, a temperature of about 9.3 keV (= 108 million Kelvin) and is located at redshift z=0.32.

This composite image clearly shows a large 'Brightest Cluster Galaxy' (BCG) within a few arc seconds from the peak of the X-ray emission; the SZE detection is also coincident with the observation in the other bands.

The region depicted above is 6.4 x 6.4 arc minutes.

(Note: the horizontal red line is an instrumental artefact in the optical background image.)