News Release Archive:

News Release 163 of 884

April 16, 2009 11:00 AM (EDT)

News Release Number: STScI-2009-17

Galaxy Cluster MACS J0717

Technical facts about this news release:

About the Object

Object Name:	MACS J0717.5+3745
Object Description:	Cluster of Galaxies
Position (J2000):	R.A. 07h 17m 33s.80 Dec. +37° 45' 20".02
Constellation:	Auriga
Distance:	5.4 billion light-years or 1.7 billion parsecs
Dimensions:	The image is roughly 4.5 arcminutes (7.7 million light-years or 2.4 megaparsecs) wide.

About the Chandra Data

Data Description:	Chandra data used were from proposal 4200.
Instrument:	ACIS
Exposure Date(s):	January 10, 2003
Energies:	5 - 25 T(keV)

About the Hubble Data

Data Description:	The Hubble images were created from HST data from proposal 10420: PI: Dr. H. Ebeling (University of Hawaii), I. Smail (University of Durham, UK), J.-P. Kneib (Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, France), G. Smith (University of Birmingham, UK), and D. Donovan and E. Barrett (University of Hawaii).
Instrument:	ACS/WFC
Exposure Date(s):	January 24, 2005 - February 9, 2005
Filters:	F606W (V) and F814W (I)

About the Release

Credit:

NASA, ESA, CXC, C. Ma, H. Ebeling, and E. Barrett (University of Hawaii/IfA), et al., and STScI

Release Date:

April 16, 2009

Color:

The image is a composite of separate exposures made by the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope and the ACIS instrument onboard the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Two filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges. A continuous energy band was used to sample the X-ray data. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are:

Hubble: F606W (V)	cyan
Hubble: F814W (I)	yellow
Chandra: 5 - 25 T(keV) temperature map	blue through violet

Orientation/Scale: