(Every day until Christmas, I’ll be posting a science-related image.)
Day 8
![The radio galaxy Hercules A, seen in visible light (the galaxy at the center, background galaxies) and radio light, which shows the huge jets of matter streaming from the galaxy's central black hole. [Credit; NASA, ESA, S. Baum & C. O'Dea (RIT), R. Perley and W. Cotton (NRAO/AUI/NSF),and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)]](https://sciencevspseudoscience.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/hercules_a_vla.jpg?w=500&h=355)
The radio galaxy Hercules A, seen in visible light (the galaxy at the center, background galaxies) and radio light, which shows the huge jets of matter streaming from the galaxy’s central black hole. [Credit; NASA, ESA, S. Baum & C. O’Dea (RIT), R. Perley and W. Cotton (NRAO/AUI/NSF),
and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)]
In fact, as I promised, the radio image of the galaxy (the stuff in red in the photo above) was produced by the Very Large Array (VLA), a collection of 27 telescopes, each 25 meters in diameter. By working as a single unit, the telescopes in the VLA can map the structures within the plasma jets, revealing their billows, strikingly visually similar (though less turbulent in the absence of air) to those of an extinguished candle.