Tonight I was watching the city of my old workplace, JPL, burn.
While doing so I ran across UCLA data on Messier object M87, a galaxy that contains a supermassive black hole.
I opened a certain Google Earth database built from the Ukrainian observations and found out that, indeed, this RF source is one of the brightest in the universe.
But for the first time I had a possible name for bright source GR1228... could it be M87?!
M87 is very interesting because it contains a spinning black hole that is the mass of six billion of our suns, diversely radiant in frequency and direction. It has been observed at frequencies from as low 16.7 MHz, through microwave and optical frequencies, up to gamma ray frequencies. Extremely wide band radiation. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that it is a strong cosmic ray emitter as well. As such it represents a "DNA cutter". M87 gamma rays cause the emission of ultraviolet light when the upper atmosphere of Earth is impacted.
I needed to make sure that G1228 was M87, so I did some calculations and found a discrepancy between the M87's position in Google Sky and its position in the Ukrainian radio telescope database:
Now M87 has neighbors and GR1228 has neighbors, but none are so bright in the radio spectrum.
For the time being I will assume that some kind of atmospheric refraction is at work and for pointing purposes M87 is a good starting point for listening to GR1228.
I was most curious to know the current position of M87 relative to our daily experience, so I fired up Hallo Northern Sky, a free astronomy program that does time lapse on all known planets, stars, constellations and Messier objects. Running planet and star paths, past, present and future is just amazing.
Now M87 is on a line between Arcturus and Denebola. The “Star of Joy” Arcturus is the fourth brightest star in the sky and Denebola is only 36 light-years from earth.
Today for thirteen hours M87 is exposing us to its DNA splitting radiation, starting at 9:23 AM CDT this morning and ended at 10:37 PM on a route slightly more overhead than the sun.
M87 makes a good calibration standard for celestial radio location activities. I would like to know how fast M87 it is spinning, its strength as a cosmic ray source, what kind of antennae one might use to track it, and if it is truly the same object as GR1228.
