Astronomers in the “GBT Observations of TMC-1: Hunting Aromatic Molecules” research survey, known as GOTHAM, have released a spectral line survey with largest amount of telescope time ever conducted, charting more than 100 molecular species only found in deep space.
Recent News
Astronomers Map Mysterious “Dark” Gas in the Milky Way
An international team of astronomers has created the first-ever large-scale maps of a mysterious form of matter, known as CO-dark molecular gas, in one of our Milky Way Galaxy’s most active star-forming neighborhoods, Cygnus X.
Astronomers Spot Magnetically-Guided Streamer Funneling Star-Building Material into Newborn System in Perseus
Using the powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), their team observed— for the first time ever— a narrow, spiral-shaped streamer of gas guided by magnetic fields, channeling matter from the surrounding cloud of a star-forming region in Perseus, directly onto a newborn binary star system.
IMAGE RELEASE: A Blazar In the Early Universe
The supersharp radio “vision” of the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) has revealed previously unseen details in a jet of material ejected at three-quarters the speed of light from the core of a galaxy some 12.8 billion light-years from Earth. The galaxy, dubbed PSO J0309+27, is a blazar, with its jet pointed toward Earth, and is the brightest radio-emitting blazar yet seen at such a distance. It also is the second-brightest X-ray emitting blazar at such a distance.
In this image, the brightest radio emission comes from the galaxy’s core, at bottom right. The jet is propelled by the gravitational energy of a supermassive black hole at the core, and moves outward, toward the upper left. The jet seen here extends some 1,600 light-years, and shows structure within it.
At this distance, PSO J0309+27 is seen as it was when the universe was less than a billion years old, or just over 7 percent of its current age.
An international team of astronomers led by Cristiana Spingola of the University of Bologna in Italy, observed the galaxy in April and May of 2020. Their analysis of the object’s properties provides support for some theoretical models for why blazars are rare in the early universe. The researchers reported their results in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
CREDIT: Spingola et al.; Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF.
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This news article was originally published on the NRAO website on December 22, 2020.
Recent News
Astronomers Share Largest Molecular Survey To-date: GOTHAM Legacy Data Goes Public
Astronomers in the “GBT Observations of TMC-1: Hunting Aromatic Molecules” research survey, known as GOTHAM, have released a spectral line survey with largest amount of telescope time ever conducted, charting more than 100 molecular species only found in deep space.
Astronomers Map Mysterious “Dark” Gas in the Milky Way
An international team of astronomers has created the first-ever large-scale maps of a mysterious form of matter, known as CO-dark molecular gas, in one of our Milky Way Galaxy’s most active star-forming neighborhoods, Cygnus X.
Astronomers Spot Magnetically-Guided Streamer Funneling Star-Building Material into Newborn System in Perseus
Using the powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), their team observed— for the first time ever— a narrow, spiral-shaped streamer of gas guided by magnetic fields, channeling matter from the surrounding cloud of a star-forming region in Perseus, directly onto a newborn binary star system.