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Clouds of electrons blooming in deep space have been revealed in a whole new level of detail, showing cosmic phenomena like astronomers have never seen before.
Looking like strange ghosts dancing in space, these colossal spectra could reveal new information about the behavior of supermassive black holes – and the complex environment between galaxies.
They are, astronomers discovered, produced by winds from two active supermassive black holes at a distance of about a billion light years. They were named PKS 2130-538, and many of them remain a mystery.
While the “ghosts” and the two radio galaxies believed to be responsible for their formation have already been seen, no previous sightings have captured them with such glory.
The ghosts and the galaxies that make them. (Norris et al., ArXiv, 2021)
“When we first saw the ‘dancing ghosts’ we had no idea what they were,” said astrophysicist Ray Norris of Western Sydney University and CSIRO in Australia.
“After weeks of work, we realized that we were seeing two ‘host’ galaxies, about a billion light years away. At their centers are two supermassive black holes, projecting jets of electrons which are then bent into grotesque shapes by an intergalactic wind.
“However, new findings always raise new questions and this one is no different. We still don’t know where the wind is blowing from? Why is he so tangled up? And what causes the radio broadcast streams? It will probably take a lot more. observations and modeling before understanding any of these things. “
The particular objects were just one piece of a treasure trove created by Australia’s Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope network, as part of its pilot investigation of the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU).
One of the most sensitive radio telescopes ever built and the world’s fastest investigative radio telescope, ASKAP is designed to see deep into the radio universe and reveal secrets we never knew existed.
Is it a bird? Is it an airplane? No, he’s an ORC! (Norris et al., ArXiv, 2021)
This is exactly what he does. Last year, the investigation revealed the presence of what have been called the Odd Radio Circles, or ORCs, which appear to be giant radio transmitting circles a million light years in diameter, surrounding distant galaxies. We still don’t know what they are.
To date, the EMU pilot survey has assembled a catalog of around 220,000 sources of all kinds, many of which had never even been suspected.
“We even find surprises in places we thought we understood,” Norris said.
“Beside the well-studied galaxy IC5063, we found a giant radiogalaxy, one of the largest known, whose existence had never even been suspected. Its supermassive black hole generates jets of electrons of nearly 5 million light years long. ASKAP is the only telescope in the world that can see the full extent of this faint emission. “
Giant galaxy plumes, previously invisible. (Norris et al., ArXiv, 2021)
The best-known radio sources come from supermassive black holes active in the center of galaxies. This is because when these black holes devour matter, the matter is channeled around the outside of the event horizon along magnetic field lines and projected away from the poles in the form of radio-strong jets.
These sources are the brightest in the radio sky, so that’s what radio telescopes tend to pick up. ASKAP begins to show us the extent of the Radio Universe – those weaker sources that we usually don’t see, such as the synchrotron emission of radio relics in galaxy clusters, and more mysterious objects, like ORCs and the dancing ghosts.
And that’s just the pilot survey. EMU’s investigation is expected to continue for years, peering deep into the night to uncover mysteries in the dark.
“We are getting used to surprises as we sweep the skies as part of the EMU project and probe deeper into the Universe than any previous telescope,” Norris said. “When you boldly go where no telescope has gone before, you are likely to make new discoveries.”
You can visit the EMU project website here and zoom in to explore the ASKAP radio sky.
The team’s paper cataloging of 180,000 compact radio sources was accepted in Australian Astronomical Society publications, and is available on arXiv.
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