The galaxy cluster Abell 1314 is located in Ursa Major at at distance of approximately 460 million light years from earth.
Credit: Amanda Wilber/LOFAR Surveys Team/NASA/CXC
A major new radio sky survey has revealed hundreds of thousands of previously undetected galaxies, shedding new light on many research areas including the physics of black holes and how clusters of galaxies evolve. An international team of more than 200 astronomers from 18 countries, including researchers from the University of Oxford, has published the first phase of the survey at unprecedented sensitivity using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope. Radio astronomy reveals processes in the Universe that we cannot see with optical instruments. In this first part of the sky survey, LOFAR observed a quarter of the northern hemisphere at low radio frequencies. Today around ten percent of that data is being made public. It maps three hundred thousand sources, almost all of which are galaxies in the distant Universe; their radio signals have travelled billions of light years before reaching Earth. Dr Leah Morabito, from Oxford Astrophysics said: 'We will be able to identify hidden black holes, study individual clouds of star formation in nearby galaxies, and understand what jets from black holes look like in the most distant galaxies.' The energy output in these radio jets plays a crucial role in controlling the conversion of gas into stars in their surrounding galaxies.
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