Hidden behind the crowded star-fields of our own Milky Way lies a massive cluster of galaxies, and within it a ghostly radio structure shaped uncannily like a musical treble clef. Astronomers have now shown it is a “radio phoenix”: a cloud of ancient plasma, once blown out by a black hole and long faded, re-energized by the cluster’s merger and glowing again with one of the steepest radio spectra known. We explain what a radio phoenix is, and what here is measured versus inferred.
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, using LOFAR, the uGMRT, Chandra and eROSITA, concludes it is a “radio phoenix”: fossil plasma from a black hole, faded and then re-energized by the cluster’s ongoing merger, with one of the steepest radio spectra known. The phoenix interpretation and merger-sculpted morphology are inferences, and a central radio halo is only a candidate.){kind=link}