"Monster"
outflows of charged particles from the centre of our Galaxy, stretching
more than halfway across the sky, have been detected and mapped with
CSIRO's 64-m Parkes radio telescope.
- 3 January 2013
The outflows were detected by astronomers from Australia, the USA,
Italy and The Netherlands. They report their finding in today's issue
of Nature.
"These outflows contain an extraordinary amount of energy — about a million times the energy of an exploding star," said the research team's leader, CSIRO's Dr Ettore Carretti.
The speed of the outflow is supersonic, about 1000 kilometres a second. "That's fast, even for astronomers," Dr Carretti said.
"They are not coming in our direction, but go up and down from the Galactic Plane. We are 30,000 light-years away from the Galactic Centre, in the Plane. They are no danger to us."
From top to bottom the outflows extend 50,000 light-years (five hundred thousand million million kilometres) out of the Galactic Plane.
That's equal to half the diameter of our Galaxy (which is 100,000 light-years — a million million million kilometres — across).
Seen from Earth, the outflows stretch about two-thirds across the sky from horizon to horizon.
The outflows correspond to a "haze" of microwave emission previously spotted by the WMAP and Planck space telescopes and regions of gamma-ray emission detected with NASA's Fermi space telescope in 2010, which were dubbed the "Fermi Bubbles".
The WMAP, Planck and Fermi observations did not provide enough evidence to indicate definitively the source of the radiation they detected, but the new Parkes observations do.
To finish reading article CLICK HERE
"These outflows contain an extraordinary amount of energy — about a million times the energy of an exploding star," said the research team's leader, CSIRO's Dr Ettore Carretti.
"These outflows contain an extraordinary amount of energy — about a million times the energy of an exploding star."
But the outflows pose no danger to Earth or the Solar System.
Dr Ettore Carretti, CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science
The speed of the outflow is supersonic, about 1000 kilometres a second. "That's fast, even for astronomers," Dr Carretti said.
"They are not coming in our direction, but go up and down from the Galactic Plane. We are 30,000 light-years away from the Galactic Centre, in the Plane. They are no danger to us."
From top to bottom the outflows extend 50,000 light-years (five hundred thousand million million kilometres) out of the Galactic Plane.
That's equal to half the diameter of our Galaxy (which is 100,000 light-years — a million million million kilometres — across).
Seen from Earth, the outflows stretch about two-thirds across the sky from horizon to horizon.
The outflows correspond to a "haze" of microwave emission previously spotted by the WMAP and Planck space telescopes and regions of gamma-ray emission detected with NASA's Fermi space telescope in 2010, which were dubbed the "Fermi Bubbles".
The WMAP, Planck and Fermi observations did not provide enough evidence to indicate definitively the source of the radiation they detected, but the new Parkes observations do.
To finish reading article CLICK HERE
