The Fat One’s Eyes

There’s a minor constellation in the Southern sky. I’ve mentioned it before, on numerous occasions due to it being named after a mythical creature. The Phoenix. It’s only a small constellation from our point of view, but when thinking of the vastness of the Universe, size tends to be rather deceptive. Subjective. And very misleading.

The Phoenix Constellation consists of four main stars. Ankaa, the brightest star or Alpha Phoenecis, translates from Arabic to ‘the Phoenix’.

There are more stars within the Constellation, and ten of them have their own solar systems.

Also within this tiny constellation, exists not one but two galaxy clusters. The massive Phoenix Cluster is creating new stars at a rate deemed astonishing by astronomers, and we’re actually witnessing the creation of one of the largest galaxies in the quickest time in the Universe.

Not bad for a small constellation.

But, also within the Phoenix Constellation is another galaxy cluster, and not just any cluster: the largest, most distant galaxy cluster to be discovered since 2011. And it still holds this record.

It has been named El Gordo, which is Spanish for the Fat One.

And we’re able to see this through the Phoenix Constellation. A constellation of ‘four’ main stars.

NASA and the European Space Observatories have used their calculations and observations to come up with the size of the cluster, which contains several hundred galaxies all swirling around each other due to a collective gravitational pull. Further measurements have revealed that there could be at least three-million-billion stars like our Sun within the cluster. Looking at the rate planets are being discovered around stars nowadays, it stands to reason that a fair few of these stars will have their own worlds orbiting them as well.

I’m wondering if on one of these worlds a team of astronomers is looking back through ‘our’ Phoenix Gateway, speculating if our Sun has any planets accompanying it on its journey around the galaxy.

And if there are such eyes on one world, there could be eyes on others too. All peering out, looking towards us and wondering the same thing.

With so many opportunities for this to be true, even by one tiny constellation’s standards, the Universe feels a lot less lonely thinking this way.

Or very lonely indeed if untrue.