March 1, 2020

The outburst region in the Ophiuchus supercluster

An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the observation of what was called the largest explosion discovered in the universe after the Big Bang and caused by the supermassive black hole in the galaxy at the center of the Ophiuchus supercluster. A team of astronomers led by Simona Giacintucci of the Naval Research Laboratory combined X-ray observations with ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra space telescopes with those at radio frequencies conducted with Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) radio telescopes to map the cavity generated by that cataclysmic event, about 15 times the Milky Way’s size.