Radio Galaxy Zoo Talk

Warping of radio signals

  • greggk by greggk

    In this image, and many others, the radio contour may extend beyond the infrared source in the center or side. While not consistent, it seems that other "non-overlapping" but seemingly nearby infrared sources could 'pull' or distort the radio contour. Without knowing the actual science, localization and influence of infrared sources on radio contour production, i am not sure if this makes sense. However, it would be interesting to mark all infrared sources in the same local area {even if not overlapping the radio signal} such that a computer program could discern if the radio contour is created by the influence of pairs [or greater] of multiple IR sources, even if the core signal strength is due to a central IR source.

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  • JeanTate by JeanTate in response to greggk's comment.

    Welcome to Radio Galaxy Zoo, greggk! 😃

    The radio source in the field you're highlighting (ARG0000udt) has a shape ('morphology' in astronomer-speak) called an hourglass. Most such are caused by radio emission from a hot plasma in the form of two 'lobes', more or less where twin (and opposite) jets of particles (electrons, protons, perhaps some ions) are stopped by the stuff that's between galaxies (called the inter-galactic medium). The jets are throught to be launched from the poles (or near them) of accretion disks around super-massive black holes, at the center of the nuclei of galaxies.

    As such, the lobes (and other shapes found in RGZ images) are not 'pulled' by anything.

    There are several GZ blog posts on this topic, for example:

    Radio Galaxy Zoo: a close-up look at one example galaxy

    How do black holes form jets?
    The Curious Lives Of Radio Galaxies – Part One

    The Curious Lives of Radio Galaxies – Part Two

    Making Radio Galaxies in a Computer

    Hope this helps.

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  • ivywong by ivywong scientist, admin

    Nice summary @JeanTate!

    @greggk, the reason that we are seeking the help of the Zooniverse is because our computers are good at picking up all the galaxies shown in the IR. However the human eye-brain combo is still better at associating extended radio emission with their likely hosts.

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