India’s ‘SARAS’ radio telescope has helped scientists determine the properties of the oldest radio bright galaxies that formed 200 million years after the Big Bang. The period of the Big Bang is known as the ‘Cosmic Dawn’.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Astronomy by an international group of scientists, provide an opportunity to learn more about radio-rich galaxies of the past. These radio-rich galaxies are usually powered by supermassive black holes.
A team of scientists, including Saurabh Singh of the Bengaluru-based Raman Research Institute (RRI), estimated the energy output, luminosity and mass of the first generation of galaxies, which are luminous with radio wavelengths.
The indigenous ‘Shaped Antenna Measurement of the Background Radio Spectrum 3’ (SARAS) telescope, designed and developed at RRI, was deployed near Dandiganahalli Lake and Sharavathi River in northern Karnataka in early 2020.
In addition to RRI, researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia, along with colleagues from the University of Cambridge and Tel Aviv University, have worked to estimate the energy output, luminosity and mass of the first generation of bright galaxies detected at radio wavelengths. participated in the study.
The scientists observed radiation from hydrogen atoms in and around the emitting galaxies at a frequency of about 1420 MHz.
Credit: bharat.republicworld.com /