Active Galaxy’s Actions Revealed
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Read the press release: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-missions-explore-a-tie-fighter-active-galaxy
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Text, News From The Universe. September 21, 2020
Active Galaxy's Actions Revealed.
Image, a galaxy seen from its disk's edge shows matching fountains of light shooting out towards glowing orange gas clouds to left and right.
Text, The distant, active galaxy TXS0 1 2 8 has exhibited changes in energy emission on a surprisingly short time scale.
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It is an active galaxy with a pair of high energy particle jets emanating from the region around its super-massive black hole.
The collision of the jets and surrounding interstellat gas forms lobes that emit a radio glow.
NASA's Fermi Gammapray Telescope identified gamma-rays coming from the same galaxy.
Astronomers followed up with the Very Long Baseline Array, charting the central radio glow in high resolution.
The radio waves indicate the angle of the galaxy's jets relative to Earth.
The galaxy's jets appear to have started around 90 years ago and blasted for 50 years before stopping.
About a decade ago, the jets turned on again, producing the gamma-ray emission seen closer to the core.
What caused the sudden onset of these active periods remains unclear.
This news was brought to you in part by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD