Astro Photo Gallery
Wanna see cool images about my Astronomy work? You are in the right place!
In the below figure I present a cool image of the galaxy cluster MACJ1423. Note that the green contours represent the intracluster medium, the blue one the dark matter and the image in background galaxies distorted by the gravitational lensing of MACJ1423.
Do you see how the dark matter is more elongated than the intracluster medium on the plane of the sky? What I did is to calculate the full three-dimensional geometry of MACJ1423 for both intracluster medium and dark matter.
Wanna know how I made it? Well, read my paper ;)
And here I calculated the full three-dimensional geometry of Abell 1689, as well as the non-thermal component of the intracluster medium, via a joint analysis of X-ray, weak and strong lensing measurements
I found that the dark matter axis ratios are 1.24 +/- 0.13 and 2.02 +/- 0.01 on the plane of the sky and along the line of sight, respectively, and that about 20% of the pressure is non-thermal. My treatment demonstrates that the dynamical properties of clusters can be determined in a bias-free way, enhancing the use of clusters as more precise cosmological probes.
Abell 383:
Getting a Full Picture of an Elusive Subject
Credits:
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Caltech/A.Newman et al/Tel Aviv/A.Morandi & M.Limousin;
Optical: NASA/STScI, ESO/VLT, SDSS
I have used data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes to map the distribution of dark matter in a galaxy cluster known as Abell 383, which is located about 2.3 billion light years from Earth. Not only I was able to find where the dark matter lies in the two dimensions across the sky, I was also able to prove that the dark matter is stretched out like a gigantic American football, and that the point of the football is aligned close to the line of sight. In this picture X-rays are purple, Optical are in white and blue.
Please read my paper, see the Chandra press release and the NASA press release.