Virgo Cluster of Galaxies

A composite of X-ray (blue) emission from the core of the Virgo Cluster as observed with the IPC of the Einstein Observatory and total hydrogen maps of the 10 brightest spirals as observed with the VLA in its most compact D-array configuration (red contours). The X-ray image is a mosaic of many individual non-overlapping observations with a square imaging camera, which leads to the irregular appearence in the image. The angular scale of the individual total HI maps has been magnified with a factor of 11. The anticorrelation between the X-ray emission and neutral hydrogen makes it likely that the HI-deficient spirals have been stripped by the hot X-ray halo of M87, a bright elliptical near the center of the cluster and a bright X-ray source, corresponding to the bright source at the center of the image.

The VLA was in the D-array configuration.

Legacy Astronomical Images

NRAO/AUI/NSF does not hold full copyright for this image. Contact the archivist for details.

Legacy Astronomical Image

Virgo Cluster

C. Jones, W.R. Forman, J.H. van Gorkom, C. Balkowski, C.G. Kotanyi

Very Large Array (VLA)

Einstein

1982-12-00

spectral line

21 cm

1420.4 MHz

HI

RA 12:26:32.080, Dec: 12:43:23.900

10.000000 x 10.000000 degrees

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Galaxies Series

Clusters Unit