A construction within the coronary heart of the Perseus galaxy cluster can now be seen as an otherworldly show of reds and blues because of a brand new method that entails X-ray and radio knowledge.
This system merges radio knowledge from the LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) radio telescope array and X-ray knowledge from NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory. Utilizing each to create a composite picture not solely produced this new picture, however, extra importantly, instructed a group of astronomers extra concerning the origins of the enigmatic construction.
“That mixture gives a significantly better thought of what’s going on,” Ph.D. pupil and examine lead creator Roland Timmerman, of the College of Leiden within the Netherlands, mentioned in a statement (opens in new tab). “It is cliché, however the entire is admittedly larger than the sum of the components right here.”
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Supermassive black holes are thought to lurk within the cores of most giant galaxies. In the event that they create one thing just like the Perseus megastructure, whose lobes are tens of 1000’s of sunshine years throughout, these lobes could cling round for so long as tons of of hundreds of thousands of years. The construction within the picture is believed to have been created by jets of gasoline spewed by supermassive black holes in a number of the galaxies of the Perseus cluster. Materials from such jets then heated surrounding gasoline, creating the huge lobes seen within the picture.
LOFAR is the most important radio telescope on Earth and headquartered within the Netherlands. Because it opened in 2010, it has had further antennas put in all through Europe to spice up its decision, and that is why it could actually catch high-resolution glimpses of objects and phenomena, equivalent to radio waves, at extraordinarily low frequencies. There have been no radio wave observations robust sufficient to align with Chandra’s X-ray imaginative and prescient earlier than extra antennas have been added to LOFAR. The extra antennas lastly made that, and the picture above, attainable.
The colours that went into this picture truly point out the forms of radiation that make up the lobes (the evening sky round them was imaged in seen mild by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope). Radio waves picked up by LOFAR are in pink, whereas the high-frequency X-rays Chandra noticed are in blue. Each would in any other case be invisible.
Many mysteries about galaxy clusters are nonetheless on the market. Utilizing the method Timmerman’s group got here up with may now permit astronomers to place collectively comparable composite photographs, which might demystify extra about how these clusters evolved, from star births to supernovas to collisions between total galaxies.
The analysis is described in a paper accepted for publication within the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics (opens in new tab).
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