For astronomer find galaxy the largest ever studied with a truly “terrible” size. The point also has a black hole that is no less “monster”.
Galaxy which is 3 billion light years away is called Alcyoneus. Galaxy This radio is 16.3 million light-years long, making it the largest known galaxy.
A radio galaxy is a collection of stars, planets, and celestial bodies with a giant region of radio emission that extends far beyond its visible structure.
The large-scale structure is usually referred to as a lobe. The shape is a double ellipse which is often symmetrical as they are on each side of the galactic nucleus. The active core of this galaxy emits features that extend like beams of light down its lobes called jets or jets.
Alcyoneus has a host galaxy or star cluster orbiting a galactic core containing a supermassive black hole. Like radio galaxies, it also has radiation and lobes that erupt outward from the galactic center.
The two interact with the intergalactic medium, acting as synchrotrons to accelerate the electrons that produce radio emission.
This same light emission is produced by an active supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. Researchers define a black hole as “active” when it is extracting material from a giant disk of material that surrounds it.
These beams of light can travel great distances before scattering in giant radio-emitting lobes.
Reported by Scientific alarmresearchers are baffled as to how the lobes can, in some cases, expand to megaparsec-scale giant sizes, called radiogiant galaxies.
‘If there is a feature of the parent galaxy that is an important cause of the growth of a radiogiant galaxy, then the larger radiogiant parent galaxy probably will have it,’ explained the researchers led by astronomer Martijn Oei of the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. . .
“Similarly, if there is a certain large-scale environment that is very conducive to the growth of giant radio galaxies, then the largest giant radio galaxies are likely to be within it,” he added.
In their study published in the journal Astronomy and astrophysicsthe research team looked for these outliers in data collected by Low Frequency ARray (LOFAR) in Europe, an interferometric network made up of around 20,000 radio antennas, spread across 52 locations across Europe.
They reprocess data in a new way, eliminating radio sources that could interfere with the detection of scattered radio lobes and correcting optical distortions.
As a result, the images that emerge represent the most sensitive search ever conducted for the radiogalactic lobe. So, they use the best pattern recognition tool available, namely their own eyes.
“We have discovered what is predicted to be the largest known structure made from a single galaxy: a gigantic radio galaxy with a predicted length [dari] 4.99 ± 0.04 megaparsecs. The real length is at least… 5.04 ± 0.05 megaparsecs,” the researchers explained.
After measuring the lobes, the researchers used the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to try to understand the host galaxy.
They found this “creature” to be a normal elliptical galaxy about 240 billion times the mass of the Sun, and a supermassive black hole at its center about 400 million times the mass of the Sun.
These two parameters are actually less able to provide clues about what drives the growth of the radius lobe.
“Outside of geometry, Alcyoneus and its host are highly suspect: the total density of low-frequency luminosity, stellar mass, and mass of the supermassive black hole are all lower than, despite being similar to, the medial giant radio galaxy,” wrote the researchers. .
“Therefore, you don’t need a very massive galaxy or central black hole to grow a giant star. And if the observed state is representative of the source during its lifetime, that means neither is the high radio power.”
(lom/lth)
