LONDON: Scientists have argued that the presence of a super massive black hole at the center of the galaxy must be fueling the large radio lobes which have been spotted. While radio galaxies with size less than a million light years are common, giant radio galaxies are extremely rare, even more so at large cosmic distances.
The galaxy emits radio waves and has an end-to-end extent of four million light years, making it a giant radio galaxy.
The astronomers found that this rare type of giant galaxy is headed towards the constellation Cetus, according to a news release. But the rare galaxy won’t always have such an incredible reach, because it’s dying. Wadadekar said, “When we see the sun, it is a mere eight light minutes away, while the discovered galaxy is nine billion light years away”.
The radio signals of all radio galaxies, giant or otherwise, dramatically overshadow the same galaxies’ optical signals. These lobes are the result of large-scale hot plasma jets being sent out in opposite direction by the giant black hole at the center. The first mechanism is via the so-called inverse Compton scattering, characterized by the transfer of energy from the radio lobes to the photons of cosmic microwave backdrop. This latter sequence leads to faint X-ray emission, which is seen to originate from the radio lobes of this galaxy.
The researchers further added that in the scientific terms all such galaxies which have an enormous radio size are known as radio galaxies. What makes J021659-044920 so unique is that it’s been captured in this dying phase, where the radio jets have switched off and the lobes have begun to fade.
“Our work presents a case study of a rare example of a GRG caught in dying phase in the distant Universe”, they wrote in their paper.
