Radio telescopes capture best-ever snapshot of black hole jets (w/ video)

Radio telescopes capture best-ever snapshot of black hole jets (w/ video)

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)

(PhysOrg.com) -- 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.



http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-radio-telescopes-capture-best-ever-snapshot.html

..."safe" distance. Our Universe is some serious wildness. And to think, I make this post by typing on a bit of plastic and metal which has been charged with electricity as I live out my existence in a thin film of (mostly) breathable atmosphere which gently coalesces like morning fog on this very, very old (and much-loved!) rock a-hurtlin' through space.

PB