SPT-CLJ2106-5844 is a

galaxy cluster A galaxy cluster, or a cluster of galaxies, is a structure that consists of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound together by gravity, with typical masses ranging from 1014 to 1015 solar masses. They are the second-lar ...

located 7.5 billion light years from

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

. It was discovered by scientists from the South Pole Telescope Collaboration, using the

South Pole Telescope The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a diameter telescope located at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica. The telescope is designed for observations in the microwave, millimeter-wave, and submillimeter-wave regions of the electrom ...

. With a weight of about 1.27 × 10¹⁵ solar masses, it is the most massive distant object known, as of 2011. It is about 60% heavier than previously known object detected in 2008, SPT-CL J0546-5345. This galaxy cluster was found in the South Pole Telescope Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SPT-SZ) survey. This survey was done using the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. There have been many observations completed in x-ray and infrared imaging to discover new observations about this massive cluster. Like how the central dump is resolved into two different substructures -northwestern and southeastern- which are separated by a distance of ~150 kpc. This distance is immense, considering the distance from us on Earth to the Galactic center is only 7-10 kpc. To put this in perspective, our entire galaxy could fit 20 times between these two substructures, the actual diameter of 'SPT-CLJ2106' is much bigger than just this gap The cluster has a redshift of z=1.132.

References

Galaxy clusters Indus (constellation) {{galaxy-stub