Astro 3D | Via Science in Public | 2019 Oct 06
Researchers find evidence of a cataclysmic flare that punched so far out of the Galaxy its impact was felt 200,000 light years away.
A titanic, expanding beam of energy sprang from close to the supermassive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way just 3.5 million years ago, sending a cone-shaped burst of radiation through both poles of the galaxy and out into deep space.
That’s the finding arising from research conducted by a team of scientists led by Professor Joss Bland-Hawthorn from Australia’s ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) and soon to be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
The phenomenon, known as a Seyfert flare, created two enormous ‘ionisation cones’ that sliced through the Milky Way -- beginning with a relatively small diameter close to the black hole, and expanding vastly as they exited the galaxy.
So powerful was the flare that it impacted on the Magellanic Stream -- a long trail of gas extending from nearby dwarf galaxies called the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The Magellanic Stream lies at an average 200,000 light-years from the Milky Way. ...
The Large-Scale Ionization Cones in the Galaxy ~ Joss Bland-Hawthorn et al
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1910.02225 > 05 Oct 2019
- Astrophysical Journal 778(1):58 (2013 Nov 20) DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/778/1/58
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1309.5455 > 21 Sep 2013