An international team of astronomers has discovered an unusual source of cosmic radio signals in galaxy cluster A2384. The research results are published in the article preprint on the arXiv.org website.
A2384 is 1.2 billion light years distant from Earth. The mass of the cluster reaches 261 trillion times the mass of the Sun. It consists of two components – A2384 (N) and A2384 (S), between which an X-ray filament stretches about 2.2 million light years long. The radio relic was found at the edge of the cluster, at the bottom of A2384 (S). It measures approximately 2.7 by 0.86 million light years across.
Astronomers believe the radio relic is the result of a shockwave propagation as the low-mass cluster A2384 (S) passes through the massive cluster A2384 (N).
Earlier, researchers found unknown radio relics when observing with the Australian ASKAP radio interferometer at a frequency of 943 megahertz. They are located at a distance of about 2.77 and 2.61 million light years from the center of the SPT-CL J2032-5627 cluster, which, in turn, is 3.7 billion light years from Earth.
