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Multi-scale feedback and feeding in the closest radio galaxy Centaurus A

Nature Astronomy volume 6, pages 109–120 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Supermassive black holes and supernova explosions at the centres of active galaxies power cycles of outflowing and inflowing gas that affect galactic evolution and the overall structure of the Universe1,2. While simulations and observations show that this must be the case, the range of physical scales (over ten orders of magnitude) and paucity of available tracers make both the simulation and observation of these effects difficult3,4. By serendipity, there lies an active galaxy, Centaurus A (NGC 5128)5,6, at such a close proximity as to allow its observation over this entire range of scales and across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. In the radio band, however, details on scales of 10–100 kpc from the supermassive black hole have so far been obscured by instrumental limitations7,8. Here we report low-frequency radio observations that overcome these limitations and show evidence for a broad, bipolar outflow with velocity of 1,100 km s−1 and mass-outflow rate of 2.9 M⊙ yr−1 on these scales. We combine our data with the plethora of multiscale, multi-wavelength, historical observations of Centaurus A to probe a unified view of feeding and feedback, which we show to be consistent with the chaotic cold accretion self-regulation scenario9,10.

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Fig. 1: Our nearest neighbouring radio galaxy, Centaurus A, as seen at 185 MHz with the Murchison Widefield Array.
Fig. 2: The northern transition region with multifrequency data overlaid.
Fig. 3: Density map of RGB stars.

Data availability

The raw visibility data from the MWA that support the findings of this study (as detailed in Table 1) are publicly available from the MWA All-Sky Virtual Observatory; https://asvo.mwatelescope.org/. The MWA radio image data (as displayed in Figs. 1 and 2 and Extended Data Fig. 1) can be accessed through the Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center (CDS) via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via https://cdsarc.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/other/NatAs. Optical image data require specialist instrumental knowledge for accurate interpretation and will be made available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author, so that additional guidance can be provided.

Code availability

No custom code or algorithm was developed as part of this work, apart from simple scripting routines written in the Python language and used to run standard astronomy software tools, as described in the text.

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Acknowledgements

This scientific work makes use of the Murchison Radio-Astronomy Observatory, operated by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji people as the traditional owners of the Observatory site. Support for the operation of the MWA is provided by the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, under a contract to Curtin University administered by Astronomy Australia Limited. We acknowledge the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, which is supported by the Western Australian and Australian Governments. M.G. acknowledges partial support by National Aeronautics and Space Administration Chandra GO8-19104X/GO9-20114X and Hubble Space Telescope GO-15890.020/023-A, and the BlackHoleWeather programme. M.S.C. and M.M. thank S. Courteau and D. Simons for CFHT Director’s discretionary time via the Mauna Kea Graduate School programme. Research by D.C. is supported by National Science Foundation grant AST-1814208. This work was supported by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship under grant FT180100321. The authors thank A. Pillepich, R. Morganti, R. Wahl-Olsen and M. Sidonio for useful discussions and guidance during preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Curtin University, Bentley, Western Australia, Australia

    B. McKinley & S. J. Tingay

  2. INAF, Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio, Bologna, Italy

    M. Gaspari

  3. Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    M. Gaspari

  4. Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA

    R. P. Kraft

  5. Department of Geology & Geophysics, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    C. Matherne

  6. Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), Dwingeloo, the Netherlands

    A. R. Offringa

  7. Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

    M. McDonald & M. S. Calzadilla

  8. Department of Astronomy, Joint Space-Science Institute, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    S. Veilleux

  9. School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

    S. S. Shabala

  10. ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO-3D), Bentley, Western Australia, Australia

    S. S. Shabala

  11. Canadian Astronomy Data Centre, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

    S. D. J. Gwyn

  12. Sydney Institute for Astronomy, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    J. Bland-Hawthorn

  13. University of Tampa, Tampa, FL, USA

    D. Crnojević

  14. Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    B. M. Gaensler

  15. Curtin Institute for Computation, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia

    M. Johnston-Hollitt

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  1. B. McKinley
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Contributions

Processing of the radio data was performed by B.M. A.R.O. contributed software development crucial to the success of the radio-data processing. Processing of the lower resolution Hα data in Fig. 2 and visualization of the radio data in Extended Data Fig. 1 was performed by C.M. Processing of the CFHT data was performed by M.S.C., M.M. and S.D.J.G. R.P.K. provided the X-ray data and input regarding its role in the analysis. D.C. provided the RGB star map and input regarding the merger history of Centaurus A.M.G., S.S.S., S.V., S.J.T. and J.B-H. provided input on modelling, theoretical aspects and consistency with observations. B.M.G. and M.J-H. played critical roles in the upgrade of the MWA that enabled the radio observations. All authors contributed to the interpretation of the data and the discussion presented, and all were involved in the writing of the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to B. McKinley.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Astronomy thanks Martin Hardcastle, Gene Leung and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Centaurus A with modified intensity and color scale.

Centaurus A as imaged with the MWA at 185 MHz, with the intensity scale manipulated in order to deal with the extreme dynamic range of the image. The intensity scale has been altered in a non-linear fashion, so the greyscale/colorscale range is not meaningful and is not displayed. This is intended as a qualitative representation of the data only. The average restoring beam is a Gaussian of width 1.5 x 1.2 arcmin with a major axis position angle of 155°. Right: The image has been stretched using the astrophotography program PixInsight (see Methods) to effectively identify and label the key features of the radio galaxy. This image was not used for quantitative analyses, but is used here to indicate the positions of various features discussed in the text, including the 71° opening angle estimated for the southern component of the broad AGN outflow (blue lines). Left: Color has been added to the stretched image in the right panel using Photoshop, in order to better show the large-scale diffuse emission along with the finer details of the radio lobes. Yellow and white show higher intensities, while red and magenta show lower intensities.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Centaurus A in Hα emission with radio and X-ray contours.

Widefield Hα image of the central 1° of Centaurus A taken with CFHT. The point spread function is characterised by a two-dimensional Moffat function with a core width of 5.7 arcsec (see Methods). Red contours show the X-ray knots from Fig. 2 at approximately 3σ and 6σ above the background noise, where σ is the standard deviation of a group of background pixels. Blue contours are from the MWA radio image at 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2 Jy/beam. The average restoring beam of the MWA image from which the blue contours were obtained is a Gaussian of width 1.5 x 1.2 arcmin with a major axis position angle of 155°. Top right inset: higher resolution (0.8 arcsec) MMTF image41 zoom in on part of the outer filament showing the arcs of ionised gas which resemble bow shocks. Bottom left inset: higher resolution (0.8 arcsec) MMTF image41 zoom in on inner filament showing a similarly shaped arc of ionised gas, indicating the presence of a wind from the central galaxy.

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McKinley, B., Tingay, S.J., Gaspari, M. et al. Multi-scale feedback and feeding in the closest radio galaxy Centaurus A. Nat Astron 6, 109–120 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01553-3

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