Scientists for first time discover radio emission covering giant galaxy with black hole

In a first, scientists have discovered a faint radio emission covering a giant galaxy with an energetic black hole at its centre.

The discovery, made by using high contrast imaging, was made by a team of astronomers in Japan. This included Shinya Komugi (Kogakuin University), Yoshiki Toba (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan [NAOJ]), Yoshiki Matsuoka (Ehime University), Toshiki Saito (NAOJ), and Takuji Yamashita (NAOJ).

They used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, for collecting data.

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The study, titled "Detection of extended millimeter emission in the host galaxy of 3C273 and its implications for QSO feedback via high dynamic range ALMA imaging," has been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

The gas created directly by the central black hole releases radio emission and the team expects to understand how a black hole interacts with its host galaxy by applying the same technique to other quasars.

Giving off enormous radiation after swallowing its surrounding material, a quasar is the nucleus of a galaxy believed to house a massive black hole at its centre.

3C273, a quasar that lies at a distance of 2.4 billion light-years from Earth, is one of the most frequently observed sources with telescopes because it can be used as a standard of position in the sky.

It is the first quasar ever discovered, the brightest, and the best studied. Knowledge about 3C273 has been concentrated on its bright central nuclei, where most radio waves come from as has been known for decades as the most famous quasar.

To reduce the leakage of radio waves from 3C273 to the galaxy, the research team used a technique called self-calibration and reached an imaging dynamic range of 85000, an ALMA record for extragalactic objects.

(With inputs from agencies)

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