Australian and German scientists have discovered the presence of a jet of material expelled to great distances from the centre of the nearby Circinus galaxy.
The material - charged particles moving in magnetic fields - has been identified by comparing optical and radio telescope images captured at observatories in two continents.
Circinus is a spiral galaxy like our own Milky Way galaxy, located near the direction of the pointers to the southern cross constellation but 12 million light years away.
The galaxy was discovered only in 1977 when Professor Ken Freeman at Mt Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatory noticed a smudge on a photographic plate.
Dr Marc Elmouttie, who was awarded his PhD for work undertaken in the University of Queensland's Physics Department, said Circinus lay in the direction of our Milky Way galaxy plane, which obscured its field of view, and it could be observed only from the Earth's southern hemisphere.
'Not a lot was known about Circinus after several surveys of the sky and my earlier honours study had suggested it would make a promising PhD study,' he said.
Dr Elmouttie made the discovery about the mystery material with scientists from the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF) in Sydney and one of the world's leading centres in radio astronomy, the Max Planck Institut fur Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany.
His Australian Postgraduate Award-funded study was supervised by Dr Keith Jones of the University of Queensland Physics Department and Dr Raymond Haynes of the Australia Telescope National Facility in Sydney.
Dr Elmouttie said because the galaxy's distance from earth was relatively small in astronomical terms (the furthest known galaxies in the Universe are 15 billion light years away) the scientific group had been able to image its nucleus or centre with amazing detail.
'To do this, we used the Australia Telescope in Narrabri NSW to make pictures of the radio emission of the centre,' he said.
'We also acquired optical pictures of the centre using the Anglo-Australian Telescope in Coonabarabran, NSW.'
By comparing the radio and optical images, the scientists discovered a narrow but intense jet of material that was being expelled from the centre of the galaxy. The activity (or violent energy) at the centre of the galaxy was so great that the material was observed as being thrown thousands of light years (or tens of millions of billions of kilometres) away from the galaxy.
'Using the optical images, we can see a ring of gas which surrounds the centre of the galaxy and this jet of material,' he said.
'We believe we are seeing the presence of a massive object at the centre of the Circinus galaxy, possibly a black hole, with gas and stars surrounding this central object and material being ejected from this system.'
To confirm that the scientists were seeing the actual ejection of material and not some linear feature resembling a jet of matter, Dr Elmouttie and Dr Haynes went to the Andes in Chile to use the Swedish European Southern Observatory Submilllimeter Telescope (SEST), with the help of Dr Marita Krause of Max Planck. Their trip was funded by an Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation grant.
Using a technique similar to that used by police to determine the speed at which motorists travel (known as the Doppler shift technique), they measured the velocities of gas clouds in the centre of the galaxy, 12 million light years away.
'Preliminary results indicated that outflowing velocities were present in the centre,' he said. 'With this incentive, we further analysed the optical Anglo-Australian Telescope data which has a very high resolution.
'There is now little doubt that the gas at the centre of the Circinus galaxy is being ejected away from the centre at velocities of hundreds of kilometres per second.
'This galaxy is now acknowledged as a very important object for study by scientists throughout the world.
'Research completed at UQ adds weight to the belief of many astronomers that most galaxies contain such amazing phenomena at their centres but their distance from us makes them difficult to detect.
'In understanding the activity in galaxy centres, astronomers hopefully will one day understand how galaxies formed and why they are made up the way they are.'
Melbourne-born Dr Elmouttie, a University of Queensland science honours graduate, became interested in astronomy as a child, borrowing his father's binoculars and using a small optical telescope to scan the skies.
A self-confessed sci-fi movie 'geek', he joined the South-East Queensland Astronomical Society on arriving in Queensland, and is still a member. He is doing a diploma of education teaching practicum at Grace Lutheran College at Rothwell, which has set up its its own optical observatory and is currently installing a radio telescope donated by the ATNF.
Dr Elmouttie said a lot of fundamental research like astronomy was under funding attack, but it was important to realise that much communications technology had been developed and improved through such research.
'All the technologies we used, except those in Chile, were Australian-made by engineers developing expertise in providing more sensitive receivers,' he said.
Dr Elmouttie said astronomers generally were interested in the philosophy of science - why things looked so beautiful and perfect, as well as the science of understanding those symmetries.
'Astronomers sometimes make good philosophers because in staring out into the skies, they are literally forced to look at the big picture,' he said.
Media: For further information, contact Dr Elmouttie, telephone work 07 3365 3424, home 07 3371 1459.
