It is unbelievable that this photo does not show the starry sky before. Instead, each white dot is a miraculous black hole in the heart of a different galaxy. These exceptions are made not by visible light, but by radio waves emitted by orbiting these distant, massive black holes, which are the most detailed celestial maps at low radio frequencies.
Wireless feedback compiled by LOw-Frequency ARray (Promises), An organization with 52 stations distributed in nine European countries: Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, France, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Ireland, Latvia and Italy. Together, they are the world’s largest shared radio telescope.
Lead Teacher Dr. Said Francesco de Casparin of the University of Hamburg Report, Report.
The data collected covers 4 percent of the northern part of the sky and is the beginning of an ambitious project to map the entire northern sky. As indicated Astronomy and astronomyThis project will help answer questions that vary greatly from the extraterrestrial magnetic fields to the distribution of galaxies in the universe.
Observations are made on so-called low radio frequencies. Large radio wavelengths are greatly affected by the ionosphere, the layer of electrically charged particles around our planet. The free electrons that make up this layer are not suitable for these radio observations because their motion affects what astronomers can observe.
“It’s like trying to see a world submerged in a swimming pool.” During the climb, the water waves in the pool divert light rays and distort vision, explained Rainet Von Veeran, co-editor at Leiden Labs.
Correcting the ionosphere effect is not an easy task. The researchers had to use supercomputers, which could do this every 4 seconds. Since this map requires 256 hours of observation, you can imagine what a challenge that will be.
“After so many years of software development, it’s great to see that it really worked,” said Hope Ruddering, director of science at Leiden Labs.
By definition black holes do not emit light, so it is amazing how this map allows us to see something completely invisible. It is completely unusual to see 25,000 of them at once.
