Cosmic battle creates Milky-Way sized tunnel

The top image show the disturbed hot multi-million degree gas in Abell 2597 and the dashed rectangle shows the scale of the two lower images. Resembling the center of an apple invaded by worms, the X-ray emission in the lower left image shows a number of dark holes as well as a tunnel in the hot gas. The X-ray image has been processed to remove the smooth emission and highlight the central structure, similar to slicing through an apple to look at a cross-section of the core. The image on the right shows an overlay (in blue) of the low frequency radio emission from the central supermassive black hole which has carved out the Milky-Way sized tunnel in the hot gas. This image was presented to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, DC on January 12, 2006. PHOTO CREDIT: NRL/T. Clarke et al.