AGNs Seen at Different Angles
nrao_NRAO_Gallery_nrao18cf1_final2
Credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF
One type of active galactic nuclei (AGN) -- a supermassive black hole that is gobbling up gas and dust -- is called a quasar. Quasars got their name because, when first discovered, they were called "quasi-stellar objects" meaning "star-like." They are very powerful sources of radiation, sometimes having luminosities thousands of times greater than entire galaxies, but when observed optically they appeared to only be distant faint stars or, in some cases, didn't appear at all. Nowadays we know these objects are actually the nuclei of galaxies with feeding supermassive black holes at their centers. These supermassive black holes swirl the nearby gas and dust into an accretion disk and often emit jets of particles away at nearly the speed of light. If one of these jets happens to be pointing directly at the Earth we call it a blazar.
Provider: National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Image Source: https://public.nrao.edu/?post_type=release=11064
Curator: NRAO/AUI/NSF, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
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Image Details
- ID
- NRAO_Gallery_nrao18cf1_final2
- Subject Category
- E.5.3.2.1 E.5.3.2.3
- Subject Name
- Quasar, Blazar
- Credits
- Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF
- Release Date
- Lightyears
- Redshift
- Reference Url
- https://public.nrao.edu/?post_type=release=11064
- Type
- Artwork
- Image Quality
- Good
- Distance Notes
- Facility
- Instrument
- Color Assignment
- Band
- Bandpass
- Central Wavelength
- Start Time
- Integration Time
- Dataset ID
- Notes
- Coordinate Frame
- Equinox
- Reference Value
- Reference Dimension
- Reference Pixel
- Scale
- Rotation
- Coordinate System Projection:
- Quality
- FITS Header
- Notes
- Creator (Curator)
- NRAO/AUI/NSF
- URL
- https://public.nrao.edu
- Name
- NRAO/AUI/NSF
- outreach@nrao.edu
- Telephone
- Address
- 520 Edgemont Road
- City
- Charlottesville
- State/Province
- Virginia
- Postal Code
- 22903
- Country
- USA
- Rights
- Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
- Publisher
- NRAO/AUI/NSF
- Publisher ID
- nrao
- Resource ID
- Resource URL
- https://public.nrao.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/nrao18cf1_final2.jpg
- Related Resources
- Metadata Date
- 2018-07-12T14:04:50-04:00
- Metadata Version
- 1.1
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
