Multimedia Gallery
Composite image of galaxy NGC 4631 -- the 'Whale galaxy'
This composite image of the galaxy NGC 4631 -- the "Whale Galaxy" -- was made using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array and reveals hair-like filaments of the galaxy’s magnetic field protruding above and below the galaxy’s disk.
[Research supported by National Science Foundation grant AST 1615594.]
Learn more in the NRAO news release Giant magnetic ropes in a galaxy’s halo. (Date image taken: 2019; date originally posted to NSF Multimedia Gallery: Jan. 13, 2020)
Credit: Composite image by Jayanne English, University of Manitoba; NRAO VLA radio data from Silvia Carolina Mora-Partiarroyo and Marita Krause, Max-Planck Institute for Radioastronomy. The observations are part of the project Continuum HAlos in Nearby Galaxies -- an EVLA Survey (CHANG-ES). Optical data from Mayall 4-meter telescope, collected by Maria Patterson and Rene Walterbos, New Mexico State University; software code for tracing the magnetic field lines provided by Arpad Miskolczi, University of Bochum.
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