Astronomer here! If anyone needs a distraction, check out the GORGEOUS radio galaxies MeerKAT in South Africa imaged this weekend that were incidentally in my field of view. Both host supermassive black holes shooting material at relativistic speeds, hundreds of millions of light years away... 🧪🔭🎢 - ThreadSky

whereisyvette.bsky.social • 9 days ago

Astronomer here! If anyone needs a distraction, check out the GORGEOUS radio galaxies MeerKAT in South Africa imaged this weekend that were incidentally in my field of view. Both host supermassive black holes shooting material at relativistic speeds, hundreds of millions of light years away...

🧪🔭🎢

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whereisyvette.bsky.social•9 days ago

The fun thing is the galaxies just HAPPEN to appear together in the sky! The top one appears to be about 75 Mpc (~240 million light years) away, and jet is 100k ly long. The bottom one is "only" ~40 Mpc (~130 million ly) distant, and so its individual lobes are about ~20k wide. Ho-hum.

whereisyvette.bsky.social•9 days ago

Bottom galaxy btw is pretty famous as these things go, and there's a MeerKAT paper about it if you want to learn more! https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020A%26A...636L...1R/abstract

pyrexcorex.bsky.social•9 days ago

This news made my day.

bskoribalski.bsky.social•9 days ago

Snap :) See my recent paper with @sunmish.bsky.social @elenchically.bsky.social et al. on the Corkscrew Galaxy and A3627 cluster environment https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024MNRAS.533..608K/abstract

therealtolstoy.bsky.social•8 days ago

You guys have all the fun down under. Great paper, stunning findings, will need a glass of red to take it all in!

bskoribalski.bsky.social•9 days ago

The Corkscrew Galaxy - it's full length is nearly 1 Mpc. #extragalactic #astronomy #radioastronomy

divinemiscarriage.bsky.social•8 days ago

No need to brag about it

mapperwocky.bsky.social•8 days ago

Is the Corkscrew Galaxy that whole length? Are we viewing it on its side? It really looks like the “core” is to the left and the rest of it is “streaming away” as if it was a radio comet!

bskoribalski.bsky.social•8 days ago

The radio core is indeed at the location of the optical galaxy. One-sided cometary radio tails - here twisted like a corkscrew - form when the galaxy ploughs through the intracluster medium. The bubble-shaped old part of the tail is likely the result of a head-on collision with a shock front.

mapperwocky.bsky.social•7 days ago

Oh cool, thanks for explaining that! Radio is an interesting view of the universe.

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