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Related: About this forumMysteries of Jets from Giant Black Holes
This detailed view shows the central parts of the nearby active galaxy NGC 1433. The dim blue background image, showing the central dust lanes of this galaxy, comes from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The coloured structures near the centre are from recent ALMA observations that have revealed a spiral shape, as well as an unexpected outflow, for the first time.
Two international teams of astronomers have used the power of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to focus on jets from the huge black holes at the centres of galaxies and observe how they affect their surroundings. They have respectively obtained the best view yet of the molecular gas around a nearby, quiet black hole and caught an unexpected glimpse of the base of a powerful jet close to a distant black hole.
There are supermassive black holes with masses up to several billion solar masses at the hearts of almost all galaxies in the Universe, including our own galaxy, the Milky Way. In the remote past, these bizarre objects were very active, swallowing enormous quantities of matter from their surroundings, shining with dazzling brilliance, and expelling tiny fractions of this matter through extremely powerful jets. In the current Universe, most supermassive black holes are much less active than they were in their youth, but the interplay between jets and their surroundings is still shaping galaxy evolution.
Two new studies, both published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, used ALMA to probe black hole jets at very different scales: a nearby and relatively quiet black hole in the galaxy NGC 1433 and a very distant and active object called PKS 1830-211.
"ALMA has revealed a surprising spiral structure in the molecular gas close to the centre of NGC 1433," says Françoise Combes (Observatoire de Paris, France), who is the lead author of the first paper. "This explains how the material is flowing in to fuel the black hole. With the sharp new observations from ALMA, we have discovered a jet of material flowing away from the black hole, extending for only 150 light-years. This is the smallest such molecular outflow ever observed in an external galaxy."
The discovery of this outflow, which is being dragged along by the jet from the central black hole, shows how such jets can stop star formation and regulate the growth of the central bulges of galaxies [1].
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http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1344/
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Mysteries of Jets from Giant Black Holes (Original Post)
n2doc
Oct 2013
OP
longship
(40,416 posts)1. ALMA is freaking awesome.
It resides at just over 5,000 meters altitude in the high Andes' Atacama desert (16,600 ft). It has one of the coolest looking supercomputers on the planet at that elevation as well.
The ALMA Correlator:
Here's a portion of the array:
snagglepuss
(12,704 posts)2. Its so hard to comprehend the massive sizes. Mind boggling but
so interesting. Thanks for posting.
rocktivity
(44,577 posts)3. Which might explain why the Jets are doing better than the Giants
I know, I know -- go directly to "time out," do not collect two hundred dollars...
rocktivity
n2doc
(47,953 posts)4. Let's see what the standings are at the end of the year n/t
xfundy
(5,105 posts)5. What a beautiful image.
I wonder, though, are the colors natural or added by a computer?
n2doc
(47,953 posts)6. Most of the colors represent microwave and other wavelengths n/t