VLA Makes First Direct Image of Key Feature of Powerful Radio Galaxies

National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO): Astronomers used the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to make the first direct image of a dusty, doughnut-shaped feature surrounding the supermassive black hole at the core of one of the most powerful radio galaxies in the Universe -- a feature first postulated by theorists nearly four decades ago as an essential part of such objects. The scientists studied Cygnus A, a galaxy some 760 million light-years from Earth. ...