New images of our galaxies published by team led by Durham university professor

• This movie from the team shows the radio sky as it looks to LOFAR in one snapshot.

New images of our galaxies have been published by a team of international astronomers, led by a Durham university professor.

The detailed imagery provides more information about what we know about galaxies and super-massive black holes. 

The images reveal the inner-workings of nearby and distant galaxies at a resolution 20 times sharper than typical images.

It was created from data collected by the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a network of more than 70,000 small antennae spread across nine European counties. 

It has been made possible due to an international collaboration led by Dr Leah Morabito of Durham University.

• What the images of the galaxy look like in LOFAR’s high resolution:

• What the images of the galaxy would have previously looked like in low resolution:

The project started in 2012 when the European team of astronomers began working to address the challenge of combining the signals from more than 70,000 antennae located as much as 2,000 km apart.

This resulted in a publicly available data-processing pipeline, which will allow astronomers from around the world to use LOFAR to make high-resolution images with relative ease.

Dr Leah Morabito of Durham University, said: “Our aim is that this allows the scientific community to use the whole European network of LOFAR telescopes for their own science, without having to spend years to become an expert.”