Quote:
Originally Posted by Suzy
Yoohooo Carl... 
Please can you answer the above question for me regarding Cent. A's jet?  |
Basically, you're correct. Some of the material which gets caught around the BH is funneled by the extreme rotation of the accretion disk around the hole, plus the enormous magnetic fields present, and along with other materials surrounding the hole but not in the disk, out along the rotational/magnetic field axis of the hole. That material is then accelerated out by the poles of the field into the jets you see. It's akin to firing a bullet out of a shotgun or a particle accelerator accelerating charged particles. Most of the gases are completely ionised, so you get a soup of electrons, ionised atoms and other particles getting shot out at near light speed from both ends of the hole. All that material, especially the electrons, interacts with the surrounding ISM it penetrates into and that helps to create the jets you see.
That's the simple explanation
I'll answer the rest of the question when I get back, OK
Well, I'm back now (5:25pm)
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Quasars are a type of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Not all AGN's are quasars, although some of the mechanisms which generate quasar activity are also present in other types of AGN's. Quasar activity becomes present in galactic nuclei when a lot of material is present in the central regions of galaxies that the central BH of those galaxies can chew up. Your average quasar produces about 10^40 joules/sec (watts) of energy from devouring the materials surrounding it, in terms of constant luminosity. That's the equivalent of it converting to energy of about 600 Earths per minute or 10 solar masses/year.
The central region of Cen A, though, is not a quasar. The amount of energy being released is several orders of magnitude too small to have been generated by a quasar at the centre of the galaxy. It's nowhere near bright enough, for a start. Even though the mechanism which is driving the activity is the same (a supermassive BH), Cen A is a radio galaxy. Much of the energy coming from the galaxy is in radio and x-ray emissions from the radio lobes at and near the ends of the jets coming from its nucleus.
Thanks for posting.
)
and i can understand your love of Centaurus A. Total kudos to you Mike, those pics are just breathtaking.
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