Ten high school students have been awarded for academic achievement, community involvement and leadership skills.
Recent News
NSF NRAO Leads Future of U.S. Radio Astronomy with First Light from Next Generation Very Large Array Prototype
The proposed array’s design will improve on the sensitivity and spatial resolution—with 10 times the effective collecting area and resolution—over the current NSF VLA and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array at the same wavelengths.
VLBA Maps Turbulent ‘Weather’ in the Milky Way
Astronomers using the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (NSF VLBA), operated by the NSF National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO), have made the first clear, radio-wavelength detection of how turbulent gas in our own Galaxy distorts light from a distant quasar.
Spotted: ‘Death Star’ Black Holes in Action
Abell 478 and NGC 5044 (Labeled)
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Bologna/F. Ubertosi; Insets Radio: NSF/AUI/NRAO/VLBA; Wide field Image: Optical/IR: Univ. of Hawaii/Pan-STARRS; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk
Huge black holes are firing powerful beams of particles into space — and then changing their aim to fire at new targets. This discovery, made using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (NRAO) Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), shows what kind of widespread impact black holes can have on their surrounding galaxy and beyond.
A team of astronomers looked at 16 supermassive black holes in galaxies surrounded by hot gas detected in X-rays by Chandra. Using radio data from the VLBA, operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, they studied the directions of beams — also known as jets — of particles fired a few light-years away from the black holes. This gives the scientists a picture of where each beam is currently pointed, as seen from Earth. Each black hole fires two beams in opposite directions.
The team then used Chandra data to study pairs of cavities, or bubbles, in the hot gas that were created in the past by the beams pushing gas outwards. The locations of large outer cavities indicate the direction those beams pointed millions of years earlier. The researchers then compared the directions of the radio beams with the directions of the pairs of cavities. Read the full release.
This news article was originally published on the NRAO website on May 22, 2024.
Recent News
AUI Announces 2026 Scholarship Recipients
Ten high school students have been awarded for academic achievement, community involvement and leadership skills.
NSF NRAO Leads Future of U.S. Radio Astronomy with First Light from Next Generation Very Large Array Prototype
The proposed array’s design will improve on the sensitivity and spatial resolution—with 10 times the effective collecting area and resolution—over the current NSF VLA and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array at the same wavelengths.
VLBA Maps Turbulent ‘Weather’ in the Milky Way
Astronomers using the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (NSF VLBA), operated by the NSF National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO), have made the first clear, radio-wavelength detection of how turbulent gas in our own Galaxy distorts light from a distant quasar.