Astronomers have used two Australian radio telescopes and several optical telescopes to study complex mechanisms that are fueling jets of material blasting away from a black hole 55 million × more massive than the sun.

The international team of scientists used the telescopes to observe a nearby radio galaxy known as Centaurus A. Centaurus A is 12 million light-years away from Earth and is a popular target for amateur and professional astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere due to its size, elegant dust lanes and prominent plumes of material.

"As the closest radio galaxy to Earth, Centaurus A is the perfect cosmic laboratory to study the physical processes responsible for moving material and energy away from the galaxy's core," said Ben McKinley at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia.

"Being so close to Earth and so big actually makes studying this galaxy a real challenge because most of the telescopes capable of resolving the detail we need for this type of work have fields of view that are smaller than the area of sky Centaurus A takes up," McKinley said. “We used the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and Parkes. These radio telescopes both have large fields of view, allowing them to image a large portion of sky and see all of Centaurus A at once. The MWA also has superb sensitivity allowing the large-scale structure of Centaurus A to be imaged in great detail.”

The MWA is a low-frequency radio telescope located at the Murchison Radio-Astronomy Observatory, operated by Curtin University on behalf of an international consortium. The Parkes Observatory is 64-m radio telescope commonly known as the Dish, located in New South Wales and operated by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

Observations from several optical telescopes were also used for this work – the Magellan Telescope in Chile, the Terroux Observatory in Canberra and High View Observatory in Auckland.

"If we can figure out what's going in Centaurus A, we can apply this knowledge to our theories and simulations for how galaxies evolve throughout the entire Universe," said Steven Tingay at Curtin University and ICRAR.

"As well as the plasma that's fueling the large plumes of material the galaxy is famous for, we found evidence of a galactic wind that's never been seen – this is basically a high-speed stream of particles moving away from the galaxy's core, taking energy and material with it as it impacts the surrounding environment.”

By comparing the radio and optical observations of the galaxy the team also found evidence that stars belonging to Centaurus A existed further out than previously thought and were possibly being affected by the winds and jets emanating from the galaxy.

ICRAR is a joint venture between Curtin University and the University of Western Australia with support and funding from the State Government of Western Australia.