[NASA] Astronomers Find Early Fast-Feeding Black Hole Using NASA Telescopes

[SpaceMan 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This illustration shows a red, early-universe dwarf galaxy that hosts a rapidly feeding ****** ***** at its center. Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of astronomers have discovered this low-mass supermassive ****** ***** at the center of a galaxy just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. It is pulling in matter at a phenomenal rate — over 40 times the theoretical limit. While short lived, this ****** *****’s “feast” could help astronomers explain how supermassive ****** holes grew so quickly in the early universe.

NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/M. Zamani

A rapidly feeding ****** ***** at the center of a dwarf galaxy in the early universe, shown in this artist’s concept, may hold important clues to the evolution of supermassive ****** holes in general.

Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

discovered this low-mass supermassive ****** ***** just 1.5 billion years after the big bang. The ****** ***** is pulling in matter at a phenomenal rate — over 40 times the theoretical limit. While short lived, this ****** *****’s “feast” could help astronomers explain how supermassive ****** holes grew so quickly in the early universe.

Supermassive ****** holes exist at the center of most galaxies, and modern telescopes continue to observe them at surprisingly early times in the universe’s evolution. It’s difficult to understand how these ****** holes were able to grow so big so rapidly. But with the discovery of a low-mass supermassive ****** ***** feasting on material at an extreme rate so soon after the birth of the universe, astronomers now have valuable new insights into the mechanisms of rapidly growing ****** holes in the early universe.

The ****** *****, called LID-568, was hidden among thousands of objects in the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, a catalog resulting from some

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. This population of galaxies is very bright in the X-ray light, but invisible in optical and previous near-infrared observations. By following up with Webb, astronomers could use the observatory’s unique infrared sensitivity to detect these faint counterpart emissions, which led to the discovery of the ****** *****.

The speed and size of these outflows led the team to infer that a substantial fraction of the mass growth of LID-568 may have occurred in a single episode of rapid accretion.

LID-568 appears to be feeding on matter at a rate 40 times its Eddington limit. This limit relates to the maximum amount of light that material surrounding a ****** ***** can emit, as well as how fast it can absorb matter, such that its inward gravitational force and outward pressure generated from the heat of the compressed, infalling matter remain in balance.

These results provide new insights into the formation of supermassive ****** holes from smaller ****** ***** “seeds,” which current theories suggest arise either from the ****** of the universe’s first stars (light seeds) or the direct collapse of gas clouds (heavy seeds). Until now, these theories lacked observational confirmation.

The new discovery suggests that “a significant portion of mass growth can occur during a single episode of rapid feeding, regardless of whether the ****** ***** originated from a light or heavy seed,” said International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab astronomer Hyewon Suh, who led the research team.

A paper describing these results (“A super-Eddington-accreting ****** ***** ~1.5 Gyr after the Big Bang observed with JWST”)

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

About the Missions

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (********* Space Agency) and CSA (********* Space Agency).

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

News Media Contact

Elizabeth Laundau
NASA Headquarters
Washington, DC
202-923-0167
elizabeth.r*****@*****.tld

Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
lane.e*****@*****.tld

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up