ALMA uses gravitational lens to image monstrous galaxy near the edge of the universe
Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - 05:04
in Astronomy & Space
For centuries cartographers were fond of depicting monsters along the edges of their maps. Now, researchers have depicted a monstrous galaxy near the edge of the charted Universe with unprecedented detail using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) with the assistance of a 'natural telescope' known as a gravitational lens. The team modeled the lensing effects and corrected for them to reveal the distribution of huge stellar cradles in the monstrous galaxy. As a bonus, the same model indicates, for the first time, the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the foreground galaxy.