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Holy cow- this is amazing!! 
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="đ€©" title="Vom Star geblendet" aria-label="Emoji: Vom Star geblendet">
I got a new MeerKAT radio telescope observation for my star-eating black hole project, and INCIDENTALLY there& #39;s two giant galaxies shooting relativistic jets into space in the field. So pretty!!! I& #39;ll explain just what we& #39;re seeing here more...https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="đ§”" title="Thread" aria-label="Emoji: Thread">
I got a new MeerKAT radio telescope observation for my star-eating black hole project, and INCIDENTALLY there& #39;s two giant galaxies shooting relativistic jets into space in the field. So pretty!!! I& #39;ll explain just what we& #39;re seeing here more...
I got a new MeerKAT radio telescope observation for my star-eating black hole project, and INCIDENTALLY there& #39;s two giant galaxies shooting relativistic jets into space in the field. So pretty!!! I& #39;ll explain just what we& #39;re seeing here more... https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="đ§”" title="Thread" aria-label="Emoji: Thread">" title="Holy cow- this is amazing!! https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="đ€©" title="Vom Star geblendet" aria-label="Emoji: Vom Star geblendet">I got a new MeerKAT radio telescope observation for my star-eating black hole project, and INCIDENTALLY there& #39;s two giant galaxies shooting relativistic jets into space in the field. So pretty!!! I& #39;ll explain just what we& #39;re seeing here more... https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="đ§”" title="Thread" aria-label="Emoji: Thread">" class="img-responsive" style="max-width:100%;"/>
First of all, it& #39;s important to note that these structures are ONLY visible in radio. Check out this overlay with @WWTelescope- the galaxies themselves look pretty boring if you just look in optical https://web.wwtassets.org/embed/1/wwt/?p=MeerKAT+1620090071_continuum_image_AT2018dyb_IClean&wtml=http%3A%2F%2Fdata1.wwtassets.org%2Fpackages%2F2021%2F05_cendes%2Findex.wtml#">https://web.wwtassets.org/embed/1/w...
What& #39;s happening here is both these galaxies have supermassive black holes (SMBH) in their centers, and are shooting particles outwards at relativistic speeds. Those jets have magnetic fields and electrons spiraling in them emit in radio (synchrotron emission)
For the jet on top, this is a highly relativistically beamed narrow jet- what it looks like if you& #39;re close enough to see one in optical (M87 as imaged by @NASAHubble)
But the radio structures go WAY further here. My research into the sources tells me the top galaxy is ~75 Mpc distant (~240 million light years) distant. Just looking at the size of the jet in the sky means it extends... ~100k light years. That& #39;s the size of our Milky Way https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="đź" title="Gesicht mit offenem Mund" aria-label="Emoji: Gesicht mit offenem Mund">
"But" I hear you ask "why one jet?" Cool answer- Doppler beaming! The light is going away in our reference frame on Earth SO FAST we can& #39;t see it!
This is an effect of relativistic beaming, that you can read more about here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_beaming">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rela...
Now onto the bottom galaxy, that looks like a jellyfish. That galaxy looks to be much closer, "only" ~40 Mpc (130 million light years) distant, which means the radio lobes we see are "only" ~20k light years big each, or so. Ho-hum
(It& #39;s worth noting that these two galaxies are so distant that it means there& #39;s no interaction between them. This is just a line of sight coincidence that both are in our view.)
It& #39;s a pretty bright "bent" radio galaxy. It shows a lot of the radio structures we see in such galaxies, from jet to lobe to bright edges. Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_galaxy">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radi...
To answer the final obvious question: what& #39;s with the lines in the radio image going from the bright sources? Those are not astronomical, they& #39;re calibration errors from bright radio sources. Hopefully additional processing will decrease them
So hey I hope you enjoyed that! I also got a detection for what I am *actually* studying in the image which I am excited about! But that will have to wait for the paper. :) MeerKAT is an amazing telescope! /end
UPDATE: there is a published paper of the bottom galaxy from MeerKAT! Fig 1 is a cleaned up image of the galaxy to see the structure better- just gorgeous https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="đ" title="LĂ€chelndes Gesicht mit herzförmigen Augen" aria-label="Emoji: LĂ€chelndes Gesicht mit herzförmigen Augen">
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020A%26A...636L...1R/abstract">https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020A...
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020A%26A...636L...1R/abstract">https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020A...
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020A..." title="UPDATE: there is a published paper of the bottom galaxy from MeerKAT! Fig 1 is a cleaned up image of the galaxy to see the structure better- just gorgeous https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="đ" title="LĂ€chelndes Gesicht mit herzförmigen Augen" aria-label="Emoji: LĂ€chelndes Gesicht mit herzförmigen Augen"> https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020A..." class="img-responsive" style="max-width:100%;"/>
