Giant Radio Jet Coming from Wrong Kind of Galaxy

Composite images showing the galaxy 0313-192, the first spiral galaxy known to be producing a giant radio-emitting jet. At left is a wide view of 0313-192 and its surroundings, as seen with the Advanced Camera for Surveys of the NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST), in an image made in July 2002. The radio-emitting jet, as seen with the Very Large Array (VLA) at a wavelength of 20 centimeters, is overlaid, in red on the color image. The galaxy is seen edge-on. At right is a close-up of the HST image, with another red overlay from a higher-resolution, 3-centimeter VLA image, showing the inner portion of the jet. The prominent spiral galaxy in the upper right of the large-scale image is not related to 0313-192, nearly a billion light-years from Earth, but is more than 200 million light-years closer. The complex vertical structure of the absorbing dust and the blue star-forming regions past a warp in the dust lane confirm the spiral nature of the galaxy, even though it is seen edge-on.