Posted on by Brian Ventrudo

Australian Astronomers Reveal Image of A Cosmic “Blue Whale”

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Astronomers at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific Research Organization (CSRIO) have revealed the hidden face of an enormous galaxy called Centaurus A, which emits a radio glow covering an area 200 times bigger than the full Moon.

The galaxy’s radio waves have been painstakingly transformed into a highly detailed image, which is being unveiled to the public for the first time.

Centaurus A lies 14 million light-years away, in the southern constellation Centaurus, and houses a monster black hole 50 million times the mass of the Sun.

The galaxy’s black hole generates jets of radio-emitting particles that billow millions of light years out into space.

The spectacular sight is invisible to the naked eye.

“If your eyes could see radio waves you would look up in the sky and see the radio glow from this galaxy covering an area 200 times bigger than the full Moon,” said the lead scientist for the project, Dr Ilana Feain of CSIRO’s Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF).

“Only a small percentage of galaxies are of this kind. They’re like the blue whales of space – huge and rare.”

Seen at radio wavelengths, Centaurus A is so big and bright that no-one else has ever tried making such an image.

“This is the most detailed radio image ever made of Centaurus A, and indeed of any galaxy that produces radio jets,” said Dr Lewis Ball, Acting Director of the ATNF.

“Few other groups in the world have the skills and the facilities to make such an image, and we were the first to try.”

Dr Feain and her team used CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array telescope near Narrabri, NSW, to observe the galaxy for more than 1200 hours, over several years.

This produced 406 individual images, which were ‘mosaiced’ together to make one large image.

Dr Feain combined the Compact Array data and data taken from CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope.

Processing the image – combining the data, taking out the effects of radio interference, and adjusting the dynamic range – took a further 10,000 hours.

Astronomers will use the image to help them understand how black holes and radio jets interact with a galaxy’s stars and dust, and how the galaxy has evolved over time.

Centaurus A is the closest of the galaxies with a supermassive black hole producing radio jets, which makes it the easiest to study.

Astronomers are interested in studying more of these rare, massive galaxies to determine the role black holes play in galaxy formation and growth.

Centaurus A was one of the first cosmic radio sources known outside our own Galaxy.

The (visible) galaxy was discovered and recorded at Parramatta Observatory near Sydney in 1826. It was later catalogued as  NGC 5128.

As a radio source, Centaurus A was discovered from Dover Heights in Sydney by CSIRO scientists in 1947.

The CSIRO image of Centaurus A were presented on Friday July 3 at an international conference, The Many Faces of Centaurus A, at the Mint in Sydney.

Source: CSRIO

10 Replies to “Australian Astronomers Reveal Image of A Cosmic “Blue Whale””

  4. Look out, giant radio telescope array! There’s a giant radio galaxy about to eat you!

  6. “If your eyes could see radio waves you would look up in the sky and see the radio glow from this galaxy covering an area 200 times bigger than the full Moon,”

    Are these radio waves reflecting off of the ISM in order to observe this huge expanse? Centaurus A cannot physically be this large from our observation post right? A span of 200 times the the diameter of the full moon at 14 mly? Wow..If M31 at 2.5 mly distance were to produce RW at that intensity, we would literally be engulfed by them would we not?

  7. Indeed, these radio lobes DO appear to subtend an area 200 times larger than the full moon. This large apparent size is due to the fact that NGC 5128 is the closest galaxy with an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN). Quite an impressive sight in radio waves 🙂

  10. @wjwbudro & azwizo 1, IIRC, M 31 does indeed have a supermassive black hole at its’ nucleus (and possibly two!). At this time, though, this SMBH’s luminosity is not of the order to classify it as an AGN. If M 31 had an AGN, we would expect to see enormous jet activity in radio and x-ray wavelengths, for example. The situation may be somewhat similar to our galaxy’s central SMBH, Sgr A*, in that the accretion disk surrounding it may be starved of material. NGC 5128 appears to be the result of an ongoing galaxy merger, so there should be plenty of material to feed into the accretion disk, thus increasing its’ luminosity enough to classify it as an AGN and producing the enormous radio lobes. And these radio-emitting lobes are produced by jet activity near the SMBH and ejected into the intergalactic medium (IGM). Hope some of this makes sense 🙂

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