Astronomers capture breathtaking photos of distant ‘X Galaxy’ – 9News
Astronomers in South Africa have captured pictures of a mysterious “X Galaxy” in the far outer reaches of space.
The team, led by scientists from the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), used a MeerKAT telescope to view the intergalactic phenomenon.
According to the group’s research findings, galaxies with twin jets of gas shooting in opposite directions are common, but their cause has been somewhat mysterious.
The MeerKAT telescope was able to get an up-close look at “X Galaxy” PKS 2014-55, revealing more details about the intriguing X-jets.
The images show a boomerang-like structure of “material falling back into the galaxy being deflected into different directions forming the other two arms of the X,” research papers verified.
Astronomers had considered that X Galaxies may have been created because of changes in a black hole’s spin direction, or two black holes’ working alongside each other.
But SARAO’s telescope findings suggest that the “X Galaxy” is, in fact, its own double boomerang model.
The jets are radio waves that stretch for millions of light years and eventually turn back through pressure from tenuous intergalactic gas.
As the jets turn back, they deflect a relatively high gas pressure into shorter, horizontal arms of the boomerang shape, the SARAO paper said.
The MeerKAT telescope was introduced in 2018 and has already shown two large radio-emitting bubbles at the centre of the Milky Way.
It has given spectacular imagery of distant galaxies and provided answers to many questions about distant space.
