Super-massive and supersonic black hole studied with the Sardinia Radio Telescope
Super-massive and supersonic black hole studied with the Sardinia Radio Telescope
July 14, 2016
Using the brand-new Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT), a giant parabolic dish of 64 meters diameter, a team of astronomers from the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and the University of Cagliari have produced a detailed image of a super-massive black hole proceeding at high speed towards the core of the distant cluster of galaxies designed as 3C 129. The results are going to be published in the scientific journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The black hole sits at the center of an elliptical galaxy some at 300 million light years from Earth.
The black hole and its galaxy are in collision course with a nearby galaxy cluster, pulled by the gravitational force generated by the huge concentration of dark matter, galaxies, and hot gas. The radio images reveal that the black hole is actively accreting matter. Part of this material is not falling into the black hole but expelled into two streams of plasma that merge to form a spectacular tail much longer than the size of the galaxy itself.
"The phenomenon is quite likely a jet contrail," says Matteo Murgia researcher at the INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Cagliari, lead author of the study. "In the case of the black hole jets, the 'unburned fuel' consists of a plasma composed by mixture of high-energy electrons and magnetic fields that cools down by emitting radio waves. By comparing the new SRT observations with those performed with other radio telescopes, we were able to obtain for the first time a map of the age of this radio source and to conclude that the black hole is cruising at supersonic speed."
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-07-super-massive-supersonic-black-hole-sardinia.html#jCp
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