at a Distance of 13 Billion Light-Years Discovered
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | 2017 Dec 06
Astronomers have discovered the most distant quasar known, which is so far from us that its light has taken more than 13 billion years to reach us. We see this quasar as it was a mere 690 million years after the Big Bang, and its light carries valuable information about the early history of the universe, in particular the reionization phase. At the center of the quasar is a massive black hole with a mass of almost 1 billion solar masses. In addition, the quasar's host galaxy has been found to contain a large amount of gas and dust, challenging models of galactic evolution. ...
Supermassive Black Hole is Ahead of Its Time
Gemini Observatory | 2017 Dec 06
Observations reveal the mass of earliest known supermassive black hole which radiates from an era in the universe only 690 million years after the Big Bang. Researchers, using unique spectroscopic data from Gemini Near-Infrared Spectrograph (GNIRS) on Gemini North determined its mass at a whopping 800 million times the mass of our Sun. ...
Scientists observe supermassive black hole in infant universe
Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2017 Dec 06
Findings present a puzzle as to how such a huge object could have grown so quickly.
A team of astronomers, including two from MIT, has detected the most distant supermassive black hole ever observed. The black hole sits in the center of an ultrabright quasar, the light of which was emitted just 690 million years after the Big Bang. That light has taken about 13 billion years to reach us — a span of time that is nearly equal to the age of the universe.
The black hole is measured to be about 800 million times as massive as our sun — a Goliath by modern-day standards and a relative anomaly in the early universe. ...
Found: The Most-Distant Supermassive Black Hole Ever Observed
Carnegie Institution for Science | 2017 Dec 06
A team of astronomers led by Carnegie’s Eduardo Bañados used Carnegie’s Magellan telescopes to discover the most-distant supermassive black hole ever observed. It resides in a luminous quasar and its light reaches us from when the universe was only 5 percent of its current age—just 690 million years after the Big Bang.
Quasars are tremendously bright objects comprised of enormous black holes accreting matter at the centers of massive galaxies. This newly discovered black hole has a mass that is 800 million times the mass of our Sun. ...
Found: Most Distant Black Hole
NASA | JPL-Caltech | 2017 Dec 06
Gargantua in the Mist: A Precocious Black
Hole Behemoth at the Edge of Cosmic Dawn
National Optical Astronomical Observatory | 2017 Dec 06
An 800 Million Solar Mass Black Hole in a Significantly Neutral Universe at a Redshift of 7.5 - Eduardo Bañados et al
- Nature (online 06 Dec 2017) DOI: 10.1038/nature25180
- Astrophysical Journal Letters 851(1):L8 (2017 Dec 10) DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aa943a