A recently released image from NASA's Chandra space telescope reveals the heart of a galactic cluster called Hydra A and details of a cycle of gases at such objects that has long puzzled X-ray astronomers, a Harvard scientist said Thursday.

The phenomenon involves the flow of relatively cool gas into the center of galactic clusters, leaving astronomers guessing as to where it later emerges.

A recent Chandra image shows long strands of 35-million degree gas extending from the center of the cluster, indicating that magnetic fields and explosions near a supermassive black hole at the core of the galaxy are responsible for pushing the cool gas around.

"In Hydra, you can see the whole cycle," said Brian McNamara of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in a prepared statement.

"You have the hot gas cloud, the disk of material feeding the black hole, and the evidence that the explosion from the gas near the black hole is pushing the hot gas around."

The image also shows a bright wedge of hot gas pushing into the heart of the cluster, 840 million light years from Earth (a light year is about 6 trillion miles).

Galaxy clusters are the largest objects bound together by gravity in the universe and provide clues to the origin and fate of the universe. Clusters like Hydra A contains hundreds of galaxies and enough gaseous material to make a thousand more galaxies.