Joint Astrophysical Colloquium
The MURALES project: a MUse RAdio Loud Emission lines Snapshot
Barbara Balmaverde (INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Torino)
Thursday 30/01/2020 @ 11:30, Sala IV piano Battiferro
Radio galaxies are powerful Active Galactic Nuclei with very super massive black holes and radio jets extended on kpc-Mpc scale. Their effect on the environment, e.g. on the ionisation properties of the interstellar medium and on the star formation (the so called AGN feedback) is still an open question. During my talk, I will present some results from a survey of 40 nearby radio galaxies with the optical integral field spectrograph MUSE at VLT. In each pixel of the MUSE image we can gather the entire visible spectrum and we can build an image of the source for each emission line of interest. It is therefore possible to explore the gas kinematics, its relationship with the relativistic outflows, and unveil jet-triggered star forming regions, enabling us to explore quantitatively the feedback process. The line emission images of unprecedented depth revealed the widespread presence of filamentary structures extending several tens of kpc, preferentially oriented perpendicularly to the radio jets, likely the remnants of the gas rich mergers which triggered the AGN.