The central object, accretion disk, and lobes are all visible. The different types of AGN are variations on this theme. These are the radio jets , which emerge at nearly the speed of light . Radio galaxies, quasars , and blazars are AGN with strong jets, which can travel outward into large regions of intergalactic space. Many of the apparent differences between types of AGN are due to our having different orientations with respect to the disk.
Considerable uncertainties remain.
An artists conception of an AGN Seyferts Consider NGC 4151, a spiral galaxy 15 Mpc away. Photographs by Carl Seyfert in the 1940s showed a very bright point-like nucleus. Later in the 1940s, astronomers began scanning the skies with radio telescopes. They found strange radio structures on opposite sides of radio galaxies, plus a tiny source of radio emission at the nucleus. The nuclei of these radio galaxies shoot out narrow beams of extremely energetic electrons and magnetic fields , producing radio synchrotron radiation .