Investigating the spectral structure and energetics of giant radio galaxies from the MeerKAT Massive Distant Clusters Survey (MMDCS)

Project Description:

The recent discovery of a giant radio galaxy (GRG) in the scale of the cosmic web (7 Mpc in size) has demonstrated that jets can travel cosmological distances without being disturbed or destroyed by magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) instabilities (Oei et al., 2022). This discovery further indicates that there might be more GRGs that exceed the suggested growth limit of about 5 Mpc. The question as to what causes these objects to grow to be this large remains unanswered. Many attempts have been made to find a correlation between the size of GRGs and their physical properties but to no avail. These physical properties rarely include the ages of the emitting electrons in GRGs. The student who gets involved in this project will investigate the relationship between the ages of the detected GRGs, their sizes and other physical properties. They will also search for new GRGs in the MeerKAT Massive Distant Clusters Survey (MMDCS) fields.

Research Area:

Astronomy

Project Level:

Masters

This Project Is Offered At The Following Node(s):

(NWU)