Recently an international team of astronomers published a map of space. Where 25,000 supermassive black holes are shown. The map has been published in detail in the Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics. That being said, this is the most detailed map of an object that propagates low-frequency radio waves in space.
Thousands of stars in the night sky. To the naked eye, all the bright objects in the sky seem to be stars. However, it seems that not all of them are actually stars. In addition to stars, many objects in space also radiate brightness. This includes black holes. Scientists say that most of the bright objects that appear to us with the naked eye are supermassive black holes. Each of these black holes is located in a far different galaxy.
Scientists enlisted the help of a total of 52 stations spread across 9 countries, including LOFAR antennas. The task of creating a cosmic map was not easy at all. The study was led by Professor Francesco de Gasparin at the University of Hamburg, Germany. "It's a result of many years of work with impossibly complex information," he said. We have to invent new ways to convert radio signals from space into visible images. '
Due to the ionosphere around the earth, long radio waves coming from space cannot be properly observed on the earth. This layer of free electrons acts much like a lens. Which gives the radio telescope a barrier to accurately detect waves. Rainout van Wiren, co-author of the study and a scientist at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, said: When light waves are reflected through swimming water, it bends slightly and distorts the scene. '
This blackhole map of space has been created by observing the northern sky of the earth for 256 hours. For this, the researchers took the help of new algorithms and supercomputers. Which corrects the effects of the ionosphere every second. This has made it possible to collect relatively accurate data. "After so many years of working behind the scenes in software development, it's really working so well," said Hub Rottinger, another scientist at Leiden Observatory and co-author of the study.
Only 4 percent of the northern sky has been marked on the map so far. However, astronomers plan to continue their work until the entire northern sky is mapped. In addition to the huge black holes, adding other space objects to the map will give you a brief and effective idea of the vast space in a very short time.
Source: Physics.org
Comments
Post a Comment