Visible light view of a distant galaxy cluster discovered in the XXL survey

This distant cluster of galaxies was discovered by the XXL survey. It was found by its telltale X-ray emission coming from hot gas, which was detected by ESA's XMM-Newton satellite. The distances to individual galaxies were found using ESO and other telescopes, to allow a three-dimensional view of the distribution of galaxy clusters to be determined.

This image was obtained using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope.