Research, carried out by astronomer Dr Poshak Gandhi, has made the cover of this month’s online version of Nature Astronomy magazine.
Dr Gandhi was afforded the rare honour thanks to his journal paper investigating relativistic jets – ultra-powerful beams of energy that blast out from the vicinity of black holes.
The research measured how quickly these beams ‘switch on’ and start shining brightly once they are launched.
The cover of the magazine features a stunning artist’s impression of a glowing relativistic jet shooting out into space and can be found here.
Dr Gandhi said:
“This was an exciting and surprising discovery. It was the fruit of almost ten years of related studies by me and my team, culminating in the truly extraordinary black hole outburst that we report now – so for it to be featured on the cover of such a prestigious journal is really the icing on the cake.
“The Southampton Astronomy group has been steadily developing core expertise in multiwavelength astrophysics, leading projects such as the one now published. But this is a tribute to the efforts and the quality of the entire research team, which was an international collaboration involving colleagues all over the world – a humbling accolade for me and wonderful recognition of the University. It’s a great time to be an astronomer.”
Dr Gandhi was in the news again last month for his part in research into gases in a distant galaxy cluster that used data from a doomed satellite mission.
