Daily Image
26-02-2020
The Launch of LOFAR Radio Galaxy Zoo
| Submitter: | Timothy Shimwell |
| Description: | The LOFAR surveys collaboration are preparing for their second public data release. The radio catalogues for this release will contain approximately 4.3million components of radio emission (around 90% of which are new discoveries) covering nearly 30% of the sky. This is by far the largest radio survey that has ever been conducted. To enable the most science with these catalogues the surveys collaboration is now attempting to group together the observed patches of radio emission into actual sources of radio emission. Many of these sources are linked to massive black holes at the centres of galaxies, here dust and gas surrounding a supermassive black hole gets consumed by the black hole, but part of the material will escape and gets ejected into deep space. This radio wavelength emitting material generally forms two separate large plumes of extremely hot gas. In some of these sources the plumes of radio emission are significantly separated on the sky and the galaxy hosting the supermassive black hole is not obvious. The surveys is also detecting a large number of nearby galaxies where there is significant star formation and this case the morphology of the radio emission roughly traces the shape of the galaxy but can be split into numerous patches. For the approximately 150,000 largest and most complex radio sources, the LOFAR surveys collaboration are asking the public to help match the patches of radio emission with the host galaxy through LOFAR Radio Galaxy Zoo ( http://lofargalaxyzoo.nl ). This will enable us to understand the nature and evolution of populations of radio sources in unprecedented detail. |
| Copyright: | Erik Osinga and the LOFAR surveys team |
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