Astronomers from Durham University, UK, in collaboration with an international team of scientists mapped more than a quarter of the northern sky using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a pan-European radio telescope.
The map reveals highly detailed radio images of more than 4.4 million objects and a very dynamic image of our universe. Quoted from Phys.org, Saturday (26/2/2022) the map has been published for the first time.
Most of these objects are billions of light years away and are galaxies that host massive black holes or rapidly expanding new stars. Rare objects that have been found include clusters of distant colliding galaxies and flaming stars within the Milky Way.
To produce the map, scientists applied advanced data processing algorithms to high-performance computers across Europe to process 3,500 hours of observations occupying 8 petabytes of disk space, the equivalent of approximately 20,000 laptops.
This data release, by far the largest of the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey, presents about a million objects never before seen with any telescope and nearly four million new discoveries at radio wavelengths.
"This project is very interesting to work on. Every time we create a map, our screen is filled with new discoveries and objects never before seen by the human eye, exploring alien phenomena, and that radiation in the energetic radio universe is an amazing experience and our team is very pleased to be releasing this map publicly," said astronomer Timothy Shimwell of ASTRON and Leiden University.
"This release is only 27% of the entire survey and we predict will lead to many more scientific breakthroughs in the future, including examining how the largest structures in the universe grew, how black holes form and evolve, the physics governing star formation in distant galaxies, and even details the most spectacular phases in the life of stars in our own galaxy."
Meanwhile, Dr. Leah Morabito, a scientist at Durham University, said she was opening the door wide for new discoveries with this project.
"And future work will follow up on these new findings in greater detail with the techniques we worked on as part of the LOFAR-UK collaboration, to post-process data at 20 times better resolution," he said.
For scientists, this data presents a major step forward in astrophysics and can be used to search for a variety of signals, from signals from nearby planets or galaxies to faint signs in the distant universe.