Zooming on the cooling flow in Abell 2667

At the cluster’s centre another rare feature can be seen: the vivid blue light from millions of stars created in a so-called cooling flow. Some of the hot cluster gas is cooling in a filamentary structure as it falls into the cluster’s core, setting off the birth of lots of bright blue stars outshining their environment. This may be the clearest picture of this phenomenon yet.

Credit: ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)