Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2021 April 21

                    Centaurus A's Warped Magnetic Fields
    Image Credit: Optical: European Southern Observatory (ESO) Wide Field
            Imager; Submillimeter: Max Planck Institute for Radio
   Astronomy/ESO/Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX)/A.Weiss et al; X-ray
    and Infrared: NASA/Chandra/R. Kraft; JPL-Caltech/J. Keene; Text: Joan
                               Schmelz (USRA)

   Explanation: When galaxies collide -- what happens to their magnetic
   fields? To help find out, NASA pointed SOFIA, its flying 747, at
   galactic neighbor Centaurus A to observe the emission of polarized dust
   -- which traces magnetic fields. Cen A's unusual shape results from the
   clash of two galaxies with jets powered by gas accreting onto a central
   supermassive black hole. In the resulting featured image, SOFIA-derived
   magnetic streamlines are superposed on ESO (visible: white), APEX
   (submillimeter: orange), Chandra (X-rays: blue), and Spitzer (infrared:
   red) images. The magnetic fields were found to be parallel to the dust
   lanes on the outskirts of the galaxy but distorted near the center.
   Gravitational forces near the black hole accelerate ions and enhance
   the magnetic field. In sum, the collision not only combined the
   galaxies' masses -- but amplified their magnetic fields. These results
   provide new insights into how magnetic fields evolved in the early
   universe when mergers were more common.

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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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