Extreme stars share unique properties that may provide a link to mysterious sources

An international research team led by Michael Kramer and Kuo Liu from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn/DE have studied a rare species of ultra-dense stars, so called magnetars, to uncover an underlying law that appears to apply universally to a range of objects known as neutron stars. This law gives insight into how these sources produce radio emission and it may provide a link to the mysterious flashes of radio light, Fast Radio Bursts, that originate from the distant cosmos. The results have been published on 23 November 2023 in Nature Astronomy.

Read more.

Image: © Michael Kramer / MPIfR; Artistic impression of a magnetar, where a neutron star emits radio light powered by the energy stored in the ultra-strong magnetic field, causing outburst which are among the most powerful events observed in the Universe.

Astronomers capture formation of a powerful cosmic jet

The RadioAstron mission opened a new window on the universe. Using a network of radio telescopes on Earth and in space, astronomers have captured the most detailed view ever of a jet of plasma shooting from a supermassive black hole at the heart of a distant galaxy. The jet travels at nearly the speed of light and shows complex, twisted patterns near its source. A helical magnetic field is threaded to the jet and plays an important role in its formation.

These patterns challenge the standard theory that has been used for 40 years to explain how these jets form and change over time.
The findings are published in Nature Astronomy (26 October 2023, Antonio Fuentes et al., DOI: 10.1038/s41550-023-02105-7): The filamentary internal structure of the 3C 279 blazar jet. Read more here.

Image: © NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration; VLBA/Jorstad et al.; RadioAstron/Fuentes et al., entangled filaments in the blazar 3C 279. High resolution image of the relativistic jet in this source as observed by the RadioAstron program. The image reveals a complex structure within the jet with several parsec-scale filaments forming a helix shape.  The array includes data from radio telescopes around the world and on Earth orbit, among them the 100-m Radio Telescope Effelsberg.  Data were postprocessed at the correlator centre of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.

ALMA Observations Unveil Gas Recycling Process Near a Supermassive Black Hole

An international team of scientists has delved into the heart of the Circinus Galaxy's active galactic nucleus using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Achieving an unprecedented resolution of about one light-year, the research, led by Takuma Izumi (Assistant Professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan), has illuminated the intricate dance of gas flows around the galaxy's supermassive black hole, encompassing plasma, atomic, and molecular phases. The team has elucidated the accretion flow that feeds the black hole and their findings broadens the path for a for a more detailed understanding of the growth dynamics of supermassive black holes.

The observation results were published by Takuma Izumi et al. in Science, Supermassive black hole feeding and feedback observed on sub-parsec scales (DOI: 10.1126/science.adf0569).

Read the ALMA press release here.

Image: © ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), T. Izumi et al., the distributions of carbon monoxide (CO, reflecting the presence of medium-density molecular gas), atomic carbon (C, reflecting the presence of the atomic gas), hydrogen cyanide (HCN, reflecting the presence of high-density molecular gas), and the hydrogen recombination line (H36α; reflecting the presence of ionized gas), are shown in red, blue, green, and pink, respectively. There is an active galactic nucleus at the center. This galaxy is known to have a tilted structure from the outer to the inner regions, with the central region resembling a nearly edge-on disk. The size of the central dense gas disk (green) is approximately six light-years: this has been observed thanks to the high resolution of ALMA (see the inset for the zoom-up view). The plasma outflow travels almost perpendicular to the central dense disk.

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