thumb|right|300px|composite image of five galaxies clustered together just 600 million years after the universeâs birth in the big bang. a galaxy cluster or cluster of galaxies is a structure that consists of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. they are the largest known gravitationally bound structures in the universe and were the largest known structures in the universe until the 1980s when superclusters were discovered. one of the key features of clusters is the intracluster medium or icm. the icm consists of heated gas between the galaxies and has a temperature on the order of 7-9 kev. galaxy clusters should not be confused with star clusters such as open clusters, which are structures of stars within galaxies, as well as globular clusters, which typically orbit galaxies. small aggregates of galaxies are referred to as groups of galaxies rather than clusters of galaxies. the groups and clusters can themselves cluster together to form superclusters. notable galaxy clusters in the relatively nearby universe include the virgo cluster, fornax cluster, hercules cluster, and the coma cluster. a very large aggregation of galaxies known as the great attractor, dominated by the norma cluster, is massive enough to affect the local expansion of the universe. notable galaxy clusters in the distant, high-redshift universe include spt-cl j0546-5345 and spt-cl j2106-5844, the most massive galaxy clusters found in the early universe. in the last few decades, they are also found to be relevant sites of particle acceleration, a feature that has been discovered by observing non-thermal diffuse radio emissions, such as radio halos and radio relics. using the chandra x-ray observatory, structures such as cold fronts, shock waves, and minihalos have also been found in many galaxy clusters. ==basic properties== galaxy clusters typically have the following properties. * they contain 50 to 1,000 galaxies, hot x-ray emitting gas and large amounts of dark matter.http://chandra.harvard.edu/xray_sources/galaxy_clusters.html details are described in the "composition" section. * the distribution of these three components is approximately the same in the cluster. * they have total masses of 1014 to 1015 solar masses. * they typically have a diameter from 2 to 10 mpc (see 1023 m for distance comparisons). * the spread of velocities for the individual galaxies is about 80
Galaxy_clusters