Spiral galaxies such as our Milky Way can have sprawling magnetic fields. There are various theories about their formation, but so far the process is not well understood. An international research team has now analyzed the magnetic field of the Milky Way-like galaxy NGC 4217 in detail on the basis of radio astronomical observations and has discovered as yet unknown magnetic field structures. The data suggest that star formation and star explosions, so-called supernovae, are responsible for the visible structures.
The team led by Dr. Yelena Stein from Ruhr-Universität Bochum, the Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn together with US-American and Canadian colleagues, published their report in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, released online on 21 July 2020.
The analyzed data had been compiled in the project “Continuum Halos in Nearby Galaxies”, where radio waves were utilized to measure 35 galaxies. “Galaxy NGC 4217 is of particular interest to us,” explains Yelena Stein, who began the study at the Chair of Astronomy at Ruhr-Universität Bochum under Professor Ralf-Jürgen Dettmar and who currently works at the Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg. NGC 4217 is similar to the Milky Way and is only about 67 million light years away, which means relatively close to it, in the Ursa Major constellation. The researchers therefore hope to successfully transfer some of their findings to our home galaxy.
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