Black Hole or Naw?
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So I think this might be a black hole because of the swirling and it looks to be a black hole absorbing a star. What do you think?
Josh M, Branson High School
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by
42jkb
scientist, admin
All of the white 'blobs' in this image are galaxies that we observe in the infrared. These can be spiral galaxies and elliptical galaxies to name a few different types. The white lines and blue image show the radio source. At the centre of most galaxies is a supermassive black hole and when the black hole becomes active (i.e., eats up some material) it launches jets that evolve into the giant radio structure we see here in the radio. So yes, there is a black hole here which we see evidence for from the radio emission.
Stars on the other had look rather different. Below the image are four more links, if you click on the SDSS link you will bring up an optical image of the field. In this case, the SDSS image only shows galaxies and no stars. There is a hashtag #star that you can search here on the Talk site that will also show you what a star will look like on Radio Galaxy Zoo. There are stars in our images which make identifying our radio sources rather difficult!
Thank you for joining in on the hunting, hope you are having a good time. Lets us know if you have any questions!
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