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Radio telescopes capture best-ever snapshot of black hole jets
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center ^ | May 20, 2011 | Unknown

Posted on 05/20/2011 3:41:54 PM PDT by decimon

An international team, including NASA-funded researchers, using radio telescopes located throughout the Southern Hemisphere has produced the most detailed image of particle jets erupting from a supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy.

"These jets arise as infalling matter approaches the black hole, but we don't yet know the details of how they form and maintain themselves," said Cornelia Mueller, the study's lead author and a doctoral student at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.

The new image shows a region less than 4.2 light-years across -- less than the distance between our sun and the nearest star. Radio-emitting features as small as 15 light-days can be seen, making this the highest-resolution view of galactic jets ever made. The study will appear in the June issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics and is available online.

Mueller and her team targeted Centaurus A (Cen A), a nearby galaxy with a supermassive black hole weighing 55 million times the sun's mass. Also known as NGC 5128, Cen A is located about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Centaurus and is one of the first celestial radio sources identified with a galaxy.

Seen in radio waves, Cen A is one of the biggest and brightest objects in the sky, nearly 20 times the apparent size of a full moon. This is because the visible galaxy lies nestled between a pair of giant radio-emitting lobes, each nearly a million light-years long.

These lobes are filled with matter streaming from particle jets near the galaxy's central black hole. Astronomers estimate that matter near the base of these jets races outward at about one-third the speed of light.

Using an intercontinental array of nine radio telescopes, researchers for the TANAMI (Tracking Active Galactic Nuclei with Austral Milliarcsecond Interferometry) project were able to effectively zoom into the galaxy's innermost realm.

"Advanced computer techniques allow us to combine data from the individual telescopes to yield images with the sharpness of a single giant telescope, one nearly as large as Earth itself," said Roopesh Ojha at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The enormous energy output of galaxies like Cen A comes from gas falling toward a black hole weighing millions of times the sun's mass. Through processes not fully understood, some of this infalling matter is ejected in opposing jets at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. Detailed views of the jet's structure will help astronomers determine how they form.

The jets strongly interact with surrounding gas, at times possibly changing a galaxy's rate of star formation. Jets play an important but poorly understood role in the formation and evolution of galaxies. NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected much higher-energy radiation from Cen A's central region.

"This radiation is billions of times more energetic than the radio waves we detect, and exactly where it originates remains a mystery," said Matthias Kadler at the University of Wuerzburg in Germany and a collaborator of Ojha. "With TANAMI, we hope to probe the galaxy's innermost depths to find out."

###

Ojha is funded through a Fermi investigation on multiwavelength studies of Active Galactic Nuclei.

The astronomers credit continuing improvements in the Australian Long Baseline Array (LBA) with TANAMI's enormously increased image quality and resolution. The project augments the LBA with telescopes in South Africa, Chile and Antarctica to explore the brightest galactic jets in the southern sky.

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the U.S. The Australia Long Baseline Array is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, which is funded by the Commonwealth of Australia for operation as a National Facility managed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

For more information and images, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/radio-particle-jets.html


TOPICS: Astronomy
KEYWORDS: stringtheory
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Caption: Merging X-ray data (blue) from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with microwave (orange) and visible images reveals the jets and radio-emitting lobes emanating from Centaurus A's central black hole.

Credit: ESO/WFI (visible); MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al. (microwave); NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al. (X-ray)

Usage Restrictions: None

1 posted on 05/20/2011 3:41:59 PM PDT by decimon
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To: SunkenCiv

Cen A and the jets ping.


2 posted on 05/20/2011 3:42:52 PM PDT by decimon
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To: decimon
black hole

That's racist. ;-)

3 posted on 05/20/2011 3:44:39 PM PDT by DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis (Want to make $$$? It's easy! Use FR as a platform to pimp your blog for hits!!!)
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To: decimon

"When you're a Jet you stay a Jet."

4 posted on 05/20/2011 3:50:12 PM PDT by FroggyTheGremlim (We will fight for America and it starts here in Madison, WI. It starts here. It starts now.)
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To: decimon

The Jets have been in a black hole for a while now.


5 posted on 05/20/2011 3:51:27 PM PDT by WakeUpAndVote
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To: decimon

Bet it feels a lot better now. I know I do after releasing a gas jet.


6 posted on 05/20/2011 3:52:29 PM PDT by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin! (look it up))
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To: decimon


7 posted on 05/20/2011 3:53:40 PM PDT by JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet)
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To: DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis
African-American hole....

Nah, it just doesn't have a ring to it.

8 posted on 05/20/2011 3:59:33 PM PDT by EGPWS (Trust in God, question everyone else)
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To: cripplecreek
Bet it feels a lot better now. I know I do after releasing a gas jet.

And how many light-years do yours travel?

9 posted on 05/20/2011 4:01:01 PM PDT by decimon
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To: JoeProBono

Alpha transparency fail.
:->


10 posted on 05/20/2011 4:01:37 PM PDT by mnehring
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To: decimon; KevinDavis

cool

black hole farting... lol


11 posted on 05/20/2011 4:15:25 PM PDT by GeronL (The Right to Life came before the Right to Happiness)
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To: mnehring

LOL!


12 posted on 05/20/2011 4:16:53 PM PDT by cweese (Hook 'em Horns!!!)
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To: JoeProBono; SunkenCiv
Cen A and the jets ping.

There's more to it than mere jets! It's broadcasting a hologram of the Squire of Gothos!

13 posted on 05/20/2011 4:19:07 PM PDT by ApplegateRanch (Made in America, by proud American citizens, in 1946.)
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To: All

What happens at The Black Hole stays at The Black Hole.


14 posted on 05/20/2011 4:19:36 PM PDT by BipolarBob (Me and OJ are going to find the real birth certificate.)
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To: JoeProBono
KIRK: "Scotty, that galaxy is spewing jets ... get us out of here!"

SCOTTY: "Sorry Captain, the imminations from that galaxy are damping down my anti-matter coils. Just hold your nose, Captain, and root for the Giants this year."

15 posted on 05/20/2011 4:20:11 PM PDT by MHGinTN (Some, believing they can't be deceived, it's nigh impossible to convince them when they're deceived.)
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To: ApplegateRanch


16 posted on 05/20/2011 4:28:54 PM PDT by JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet)
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To: JoeProBono

Another confirmation that there is a God. Amazing!


17 posted on 05/20/2011 4:32:26 PM PDT by BelleAl (Proud to be a member of the party of NO! NO more deficit spending and government control!)
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To: decimon

“Radio-emitting features as small as 15 light-days can be seen, making this the highest-resolution view of galactic jets ever made.”

Light days, light years, and light beer all go together!


18 posted on 05/20/2011 5:08:46 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine!)
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To: BelleAl

Really.


19 posted on 05/20/2011 5:32:42 PM PDT by BigCinBigD (Northern flags in South winds flutter...)
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To: Jack Hydrazine
Light days, light years, and light beer all go together!

Yeah, they're all about distance, with light beer being related to the distance to the bathroom.
20 posted on 05/20/2011 5:44:36 PM PDT by adorno
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