Radio galaxies are some of the most fascinating structures in the universe.
All major galaxies are thought to have a supermassive black hole at their centres, but the black holes in radio galaxies are actively accreting surrounding material. This gorging powers vast jets that surge out into the galaxy.
Often this creates a pair of ‘lobes’. On rarer occasions, a second set of fainter lobes appears, which astronomers call ‘wings’.
This can form two distinctive shapes, reminiscent of the letters ‘X’ and ‘Z’. The precise reason for these differences is not well understood. However, astronomers recently made a big leap forwards, cataloguing over 1000 new winged galaxies.
The structures can be massive, with around 16 per cent of the haul having wings larger than 2 million light years.
That’s nearly as far as the distance between the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy!
📸 Image of The Week
A close-up image of a sunspot taken by DKIST.
🏛️ From the Club’s Museum of Cosmic Curiosities
🏛️ Exhibit 036 - The Lost Space Tomatoes
Life in space can be strange. In 2022, a pair of tomatoes went missing on the International Space Station.
The fruit wasn’t part of the astronauts’ daily menu, but the yield from an important science experiment investigating how to grow food in microgravity. All in the hope of sustaining future human crews to the Moon and Mars.
The sudden disappearance of the tomatoes caused quite a stir. Poor astronaut Frank Rubio (pictured) was even accused of secretly eating them.
It took eight long months for him to be exonerated. Turns out he’d sealed them in a ziplock bag, which then haplessly floated away.
NASA eventually revealed that the bag was found, even releasing an image of the squished and shrivelled fruit.
They remain tight lipped as to where exactly it turned up.
Case dismissed!
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Your Astronomy Club membership comes with a free pass to the full Museum of Cosmic Curiosities, a growing cabinet of strange, profound & surprising objects from the history of astronomy and space exploration.
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I guess I'm going to challenge a lot of what you believe? But that's how development goes right? You'd rather know the truth then build out a complex fantasy wouldn't you?