Astronomers utilizing high resolution telescope arrays observed two warring galaxies battling with radiation. <\/p>\n
In a report published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature<\/a>, teams of researchers and astronomers joined together to combine data from the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope (ESO\u2019s VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter\/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to create footage of two galaxies using radiation to joust. The data and imagery recorded shows the two galactic rivals charging each other at speeds of 500 km\/s over and over.<\/p>\n \u201cWe hence call this system the \u2018cosmic joust\u2019,\u201d said study co-lead Pasquier Noterdaeme, a researcher at the Institut d\u2019Astrophysique de Paris, France, and the French-Chilean Laboratory for Astronomy in Chile.<\/p>\n One of the galaxies was observed using a quasar to pierce the other with a beam of radiation. Quasars are the bright core of a galaxy which is powered by a supermassive black hole that researchers described can emit an unimaginably violent amount of radiation. <\/p>\n The report, aptly titled \u201cQuasar radiation transforms the gas in a merging companion galaxy,\u201d<\/a> explains the effects of the quasar radiation on the wounded galaxy, describing a dramatic transformation. <\/p>\n The quasar strikes ruined established clouds of gas and dust that the galaxies use to form new stars, leaving the targeted galaxy with fewer \u201cstellar nurseries\u201d that appear even too small after the battle to support star formation. Instead the gas and dust were brought within reach of the attackers supermassive black hole, powered by the quasar, to become fuel for its next attack.<\/p>\n \u201cHere we see for the first time the effect of a quasar\u2019s radiation directly on the internal structure of the gas in an otherwise regular galaxy,\u201d explains study co-lead Sergei Balashev, who is a researcher at the Ioffe Institute in St Petersburg, Russia. \u201cThese mergers are thought to bring huge amounts of gas to supermassive black holes residing in galaxy centers.\u201d<\/p>\n Earth has no need to fear the joust as researchers explained just how far away the battle is.<\/p>\n \u201cThe light from this \u2018cosmic joust\u2019 has taken over 11 billion years to reach us, so we see it as it was when the universe was only 18% of its current age,\u201d ALMA researchers explained.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The study was conducted in the dark skies of the Atacama Desert, Chile using the ESO\u2019s VLT X-shooter and the ALMA high resolution telescopes. Both devices were crucial to scientists as the X-shooter was able to analyze the quasar\u2019s light, and the ALMA\u2019s HD results helped visualize the chaotic scene.<\/p>\n \u201cALMA\u2019s high resolution helped astronomers clearly distinguish the two merging galaxies, which were so close together that they appeared as a single object in previous observations,\u201d researchers said. \u201cObservations with larger, more powerful telescopes could reveal more about collisions like this.\u201d A telescope like ESO\u2019s Extremely Large Telescope \u201cwill certainly allow us to push forward a deeper study of this, and other systems, to better understand the evolution of quasars and their effect on host and nearby galaxies.\u201d<\/p>\n Image credits:<\/strong> \u201cQuasar radiation transforms the gas in a merging companion galaxy\u201d<\/a> was created by an international team<\/a> of international scientists and astronomers composed of S. Balashev (Ioffe Institute, St Petersburg, Russia), P. Noterdaeme (Institut d\u2019Astrophysique de Paris, Paris, France [IAP] & French-Chilean Laboratory for Astronomy [FCLA], Chile), N. Gupta (Inter-University Centre for Astronomy, Pune, India [IUCAA]), J.K. Krogager (Universit\u00e9 Lyon I, Lyon, France & FCLA), F. Combes (Coll\u00e8ge de France, Paris, France), S. L\u00f3pez (Universidad de Chile [UChile]), P. Petitjean (IAP), A. Omont (IAP), R. Srianand (IUCAA), and R. Cuellar (UChile).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomers utilizing high resolution telescope arrays observed two warring galaxies battling with radiation. In a report published Wednesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3845],"tags":[56289,56290,26643,74,70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-127545","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-alma","9":"tag-cosmicjoust","10":"tag-eso","11":"tag-physics","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114561912967167235","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}