Astronomers Capture 'Whirlpool Galaxy' with New LOFAR Telescope

Astronomers have gotten the most sensitive image of a certain galaxy to date with the help of a radio telescope. They've managed to view the "Whirlpool Galaxy," Messier 51, with the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope in a frequency range just above those of commercial FM radio stations.

LOFAR consists of 38 stations in the Netherlands, six stations in Germany, and one station each in the UK, France and Sweden. Together, the signals from all of the stations were combined into a powerful computing cluster. What's interesting is that LOFAR managed to examine the galaxy in unprecedented detail, detecting electrons and magnetic fields in its spiral arms and extended disk.

"Low-frequency radio waves are important as they carry information about electrons of relatively low energies that are able to propagate further away from their places of origin in the star-forming spiral arms and are able to illuminate the magnetic fields in the outer parts of galaxies," said David Mulcachy, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We need to know whether magnetic fields are expelled from galaxies and what their strength is out there."

In fact, the new image actually reveals that advances can be made with low radio frequencies with the LOFAR telescope. Being able to unravel the mysteries of magnetic fields is a huge step when it comes to understanding how the universe works.

"This opens a new window to the universe where we do not know what galaxies will look like," said Rainer Beck, supervisor of the project. "Maybe we will see how galaxies are magnetically connected to intergalactic space. This is a key experiment in preparation for the planned Square Kilometre Array (SKA) that should tell us how cosmic magnetic fields are generated."

The findings reveal a bit more about this galaxy, showing scientists more about the evolution of galaxies in general. This could pave the way for more discoveries in the future.

The findings are published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.