Galaxies are a lot like people -- some are notable for their shape, or their age, or their brightness, but others you can only notice how very, very loud they are. These radio galaxies emit vast quantities of energy on radio wavelengths, and
Hercules A is among the loudest we know of, with
the supermassive black hole at it's center putting out about a billion times more energy along radio wavelengths than the Sun. Now, courtesy of a collaboration between the
Hubble Space Telescope and the
Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope,
we can visualize what all that energy would look like and, well, it's pretty serious stuff. For a look at how the visualization took shape, you can check out the video below.
Read on...
