Supermassive black holes, called quasars, that are centered in massive galaxies are the most resplendent celestial objects, according to a press release by Carnegie Institution for Science (CIS), a non-profit scientific research institute in Washington, D.C. A team of researchers from around the globe, including Yuri Beletsky from Carnegie, discovered the brightest quasar ever found. The discovery is published in the Feb. 26 issue of the journal Nature.
"This quasar is a unique laboratory to study the way that a quasar's black hole and host galaxy co-evolve," Beletsky said, according to the press release from Carnegie. "Our findings indicate that in the early universe, quasar black holes probably grew faster than their host galaxies, although more research is needed to confirm this idea."
Combined data from the 2.4-meter Lijiang Telescope (LJT) in Yunnan, China; the 6.5-meter Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) and the 8.4-meter Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona, U.S.; the 6.5-meter Magellan Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile; and the 8.2-meter Gemini North Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, U.S. was used in the discovery, according to a press release from the Large Binocular Telescope Corporation (LBT) in Tucson, Ariz.
The quasar's central black hole has a mass of 12 billion solar masses and the brightness of 420 trillion solar luminosities. It is located at a distance of 12.8 billion light-years from Earth. The quasar is named SDSS J0100+2802.
Quasars are the most powerful objects in the universe, according to the press release from LBT, and have evolved from the earliest years of the universe - only 900 million years post-Big Bang - during the "epoch of reionization" when light from the earliest galaxies and quasars transformed the universe and ended the "cosmic dark ages."
"Forming such a large black hole so quickly is hard to interpret with current theories," said Fuyan Bian, a team member from the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University (ANU), according to a press release from the university.
A quasar forms when a bight cloud of material is sucked up by a black hole. As the particles speed up when approaching the black hole, they heat up, causing an extremely bright light that pushes away material behind it. This process, called radiation pressure, typically stunts black hole growth.
"However this black hole at the centre of the quasar gained enormous mass in a short period of time," Bian said, according to ANU's press release.
SDSS J0100+2802 was chosen from more than 500 million objects in the northern skies because of its unique red color. Bian said he hopes that more surprises lay ahead when the Skymapper survey turns to the southern skies.
"Skymapper will find more of these exciting objects. Because they are so luminous we can see further back in time and can use them to explore the early universe," Bian said, according to the press release.
Additional co-authors on the paper include Feige Wang, Jinyi Yang, and Qian Yang, also of Peking University and the Kavli Institute; Xiaohui Fan of University of Arizona and the Kavli Institute; Weimin Yi of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Wenwen Zuo of Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Linhua Jiang and RanWang of the Kavli Institute; and Ian D. McGreer and David Thompson of University of Arizona.
This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Strategic Priority Research Program "The Emergence of Cosmological Structures" of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Key Basic Research Program of China, and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), according to the press release from Carnegie.
