Although it seems improbable to use radio frequencies to see anything—let alone the high-speed particle jets of a supermassive black hole—astronomers have done just that. Using a global array of radio telescopes, a team including NASA-funded scientists has created a fine-resolution radio image that reveals the innermost jets at the center of galaxy Centaurus A, 12 million light-years from Earth. The detail in the image is equivalent to spotting a quarter from 5,000 miles away. As gases fall into the black hole at Centaurus A's core, the material gets accelerated outward, creating huge plumes of matter in a process not fully understood. Watch the video to see the vast size of the galaxy's plumes compared to the relative smallness of the black-hole-powered jet that created them.
Please give credit for this item to: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Radio telescope image of jets courtesy of NASA/TANAMI/Müller et al. Visible light image courtesy of Capella Observatory Optical/radio/visible image courtesy of Capella Observatory with radio data from Ilana Feain, Tim Cornwell, and Ron Ekers (CSIRO/ATNF), R. Morganti (ASTRON) and N. Junkes (MPIfR)
Short URL to share this page: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10987