After having contributed to research on gravitational waves and after having detected the signals of NASA's Perseverance mission from Mars, the Sardinia Radiotelescope of San Basilio is now the protagonist of a record-breaking observation in the closest and most famous cluster of galaxies, that of Coma : The radio telescope managed to obtain images of large-scale radio emissions in both the central and peripheral areas, at the highest possible frequencies .
The study, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , is coordinated by Matteo Murgia, of the National Institute of Astrophysics in Cagliari.
"We have obtained new deep images of the central radio halo and the peripheral radio wreckage, completely reconstructing the brightness of the large-scale structures", observes Murdia on the Media Inaf website.
"These - he adds - are the highest frequency images available so far for these radio sources widespread in the cluster". The record, continues the researcher, "adds to those obtained so far by the largest single-dish radio telescopes in the world, namely the American Green Bank and the German Effelsberg".
The high frequencies have made it possible to observe a portion of the sky which, at the distance of 350 million light years at which the Coma cluster is located, corresponds to an overview of approximately 2 and a half million light years, equal to that which separates the Milky Way from its neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy.
The data are also useful for reconstructing the mechanisms responsible for the formation and evolution of radio sources in galaxy clusters. The newly published results refer to observations made in 2016, when the Sardinia Radio Telescope did not yet have the receivers installed in 2023 and which today they allow observations at frequencies even higher than those achieved in research. Consequently, the researcher observes, the Coma cluster could reserve new surprises.
(Unioneonline/lf)
