- 3348 - RADIO GALAXIES - seeing with new eyes? What’s a radio galaxy? If you can see a galaxy in a telescope ; it’s a light galaxy. Radio waves are just light waves at a much lower frequency, or much broader wavelengths. You need a different type of telescope to detect these wider wavelengths
--------------------- 3348 - RADIO GALAXIES - seeing with new eyes?
- What’s a radio galaxy? If you can see a galaxy in a telescope ; it’s a light galaxy. Radio waves are just light waves at a much lower frequency, or much broader wavelengths. You need a different type of telescope to detect these wider wavelengths.
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- The “MeerKAT Galaxy Cluster Legacy Survey” (MGCLS) presents results now available for astronomers worldwide to address a variety of challenging questions, such as those relating to the formation and evolution of galaxies throughout the universe.
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- Using the MeerKAT telescope is producing highly detailed and sensitive images of the radio emission from 115 clusters of galaxies. The observations, amounting to >1,000 hours of telescope time starting in 2018.
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- The force of gravity has filled the expanding universe with objects extending over an astounding range of sizes, from comets that are 10 kilometers (one thirty-thousandth of a light-second) across, to clusters of galaxies that can span 10 million light-years.
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- These galaxy clusters are complex environments, host to thousands of galaxies, magnetic fields, and large region millions of light-years across of extremely hot (millions of degrees) gas, electrons and protons moving close to the speed of light, and dark matter.
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- Those ‘relativistic’ electrons, spiraling around the magnetic fields, produce the radio emission that MeerKAT can ‘see’ with unprecedented sensitivity, opening new horizons for the deeper understanding of these structures.
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- When adding the information from optical and infrared and X-ray telescopes, this is well-suited to studying the interplay between the components that determine the evolution of galaxy clusters. Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the universe held together by gravity.
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- We live in an ocean of air, but we can’t see it directly. However, if it’s filled with smoke or dust or water droplets, then suddenly we can see the gusts and swirls, whether they’re a gentle breeze or an approaching tornado.
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- Similarly, the motions of the X-ray-glowing plasma in galaxy clusters are usually hidden from us. Radio emission from the sprinkling of relativistic electrons in this plasma can uncover the dramatic storms in clusters, stirred up when clusters collide with each other, or when jets of material spew out of supermassive blackholes in the centers of galaxies.
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- By illuminating winds and intergalactic shock waves in the surrounding plasmas MGCLS can see star formation in galaxies, the physical processes of jet interactions, the study of faint cooler hydrogen gas in a variety of environments, and yet unknown investigations to be facilitated by new discoveries.
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- The MGCLS has revealed several new systems hosting faint sources on large scales. Structures are seen in the galaxy cluster that trace the positions and strengths of cosmic magnetic fields and electron populations traveling near the speed of light.
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- Two giant radio galaxies (more than one million light-years from end to end) at the center of a large group of galaxies in the cluster Abell 194, reveals the presence of relatively narrow magnetic filaments in the region, as well as complex interactions between the radio emission from the two galaxies.
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November 22, 2021 - RADIO GALAXIES - seeing with new eyes? 3348
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--------------------- --- Wednesday, November 24, 2021 ---------------------------
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