Illustrations of structures observed by artists under observation. Credit: NOJ

Radio astronomers say that hot gas jets are a Black hole In the galaxy, the center of the Phoenix galaxy cluster, Phoenix is ​​located 5.9 billion light-years away in the constellation. This is an important result for understanding the covalence of black holes in galaxies, gases and galaxy clusters.

Galaxies are not distributed randomly in space. By mutual gravitational attraction, galaxies come together to form a collection known as a cluster. The space in the galaxy is not completely empty. There is very thin gas across a cluster that can be detected by X-ray observation.

If this intra-cluster gas is cooled, it will condense under its own gravity to form stars in the center of the cluster. However, the cooling gases and stars are almost never observed in the hearts of nearby clusters, indicating that any system must heat the intra-cluster gases and prevent them from forming. One potential candidate for a heat source is high-velocity gas jets accelerated by a supermassive black hole in the central galaxy.

The Phoenix cluster is unusual because it shows signs of dense cooling gas and massive star formation around the central galaxy. This raises the question, “Does the central galaxy also have black hole jets?”

Radio observations at the center of the Phoenix galaxy cluster have shown jet structures extending from the central galaxy. Credit: Akahori et al.

A team led by Takaya Akhahori at the National Astronomical Observatory in Japan has used the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) to search for black hole jets in the Phoenix Galaxy cluster with the highest resolution ever. They have identified structures extending from opposite sides of the central galaxy. Comparison of region observations obtained from lunar X-ray observatory archive data shows that the structures identified by the ATC match those of less dense gas cavities, indicating that they are a pair of bipolar jets emitted by a black hole in the galaxy. Therefore, the team discovered the first example, involving inter-cluster gas cooling and blackhole jets, in the distant universe.

Further details of galaxies and jets can be explained by the next-generation observation facilities, such as the square-kilometer array of high-resolution observations scheduled to begin observation in the late 2020s.

These results t. Appeared as Akahori et al. “Discovery of Radio Jets at the Phoenix Galaxy Cluster Center” Published by the Astronomical Society of Japan in August 2020.