This image from the Japanese Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics shows the X-ray glow of the 100-million-degree Fahrenheit gas that fills the Perseus cluster. The white box indicates the area explored by the Suzaku X-ray telescope to detect chromium and manganese. The image is about two degrees wide, or four times the apparent width of a full moon. (Credit: JAXA)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2009) — Every cook knows the ingredients for making bread: flour, water, yeast, and time. But what chemical elements are in the recipe of our universe?

Most of the ingredients are hydrogen and helium. These cosmic lightweights fill the first two spots on the famous periodic table of the elements.

Less abundant but more familiar to us are the heavier elements, meaning everything listed on the periodic table after hydrogen and helium. These building blocks, such as iron and other metals, can be found in many of the objects in our daily lives, from teddy bears to teapots.

Recently astronomers used the Suzaku orbiting X-ray observatory, operated jointly by NASA and the Japanese space agency, to discover the largest known reservoir of rare metals in the universe.

Suzaku detected the elements chromium and manganese while observing the central region of the Perseus galaxy cluster. The metallic atoms are part of the hot gas, or "intergalactic medium," that lies between galaxies.

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