PIA09561: Dwarfs in Coma Cluster

Target Name: Mission: Spitzer Space Telescope Spacecraft: Spitzer Space Telescope Instrument: IRAC Product Size: 4097 samples x 3557 lines Produced By: California Institute of Technology Full-Res TIFF: PIA09561.tif (43.72 MB) Full-Res JPEG: PIA09561.jpg (1.199 MB)

Original Caption Released with Image: Click on image for larger poster version This false-color mosaic of the central region of the Coma cluster combines infrared and visible-light images to reveal thousands of faint objects (green). Follow-up observations showed that many of these objects, which appear here as faint green smudges, are dwarf galaxies belonging to the cluster. Two large elliptical galaxies, NGC 4889 and NGC 4874, dominate the cluster's center. The mosaic combines visible-light data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (color coded blue) with long- and short-wavelength infrared views (red and green, respectively) from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/SDSS