The cluster, designated SPT-CL J0546-5345, seen at 7 billion light years away would be four times larger in real time making it one of the most massive galaxy clusters in the universe, astronomers claim.
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"This galaxy cluster wins the heavyweight title. It's among the most massive clusters ever found at this distance," Mark Brodwin, a Smithsonian astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in a statement. Brodwin and his colleagues spotted the huge system from data collected from the National Science Foundation-funded, South Pole Telescope.
Once this distant cluster was found, the team studied it with the Infrared Array Camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope to pinpoint galaxies within the cluster. Detailed observations of the galaxies' speeds with the Magellan telescopes in Chile proved that the galaxy cluster was a heavyweight, the astronomers stated.
The team expects to find many more giant galaxy clusters lurking in the distance once the South Pole Telescope survey is completed next year, the astronomers stated.
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