Radio telescopes capture most detailed image of black hole jets
From ANI
Washington, May 21: Scientists have captured the most detailed image of particle jets erupting from a supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy, thanks to the radio telescopes located throughout the Southern Hemisphere An international team, including NASA-funded researchers made the latest achievement.
"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.
For the study, 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.
Using an intercontinental array of nine radio telescopes, the researchers were able to effectively zoom into the galaxy's innermost realm.
The study will appear in the June issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics and is available online.
Article Link:
http://www.dailyindia.com/show/440974.php
NASA LINK:http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=13587&media_id=89356151
No comments:
Post a Comment