Most Distant Black Hole Yet Observed By NASA Telescopes
Data from Chandra X-ray telescope and James Webb Space Telescopes have revealed a black hole from 470 million years after the Big Bang.
Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart
Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart
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TechTranscript
00:00Music
00:03Visit Chandra's beautiful universe.
00:07UHC-1
00:11Astronomers have discovered the most distant black hole yet seen in X-rays
00:15using two NASA telescopes, the Chandra X-ray Observatory
00:19and James Webb Space Telescope.
00:23The black hole is at an early stage of growth that had never been witnessed before,
00:27where its mass is similar to that of its host galaxy.
00:31This result may explain how some of the first supermassive black holes
00:35in the universe formed.
00:38By combining data from Chandra and Webb,
00:41a team of researchers was able to find the telltale signature
00:44of a growing black hole just 470 million years after the Big Bang.
00:50The extremely distant black hole is located in the galaxy UHC-1
00:55in the direction of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744.
01:00The galaxy cluster is about 3.5 billion light-years from Earth.
01:05However, the Webb data reveal that UHC-1 is actually much farther away than Abell 2744.
01:13At some 13.2 billion light-years away,
01:16astronomers are seeing UHC-1 when the universe was only 3% of its current age.
01:23By using over two weeks of observations from Chandra,
01:26the researchers were able to detect X-ray emission from UHC-1.
01:31This is a telltale signature of a growing supermassive black hole
01:35in the center of the galaxy.
01:38The X-ray signal is extremely faint, and Chandra was only able to detect it,
01:43even with this long observation,
01:45because of the phenomenon known as gravitational lensing
01:48that enhanced the signal by some 400%.
01:52This discovery is important for understanding how some supermassive black holes
01:56can reach colossal masses soon after the Big Bang.
02:00Do they form directly from the collapse of massive clouds of gas,
02:03creating black holes weighing between about 10,000 and 100,000 suns?
02:08Or do they come from explosions of the first stars
02:11that create black holes weighing only between about 10 and 100 suns?
02:16The researchers suggest this is the best evidence yet obtained
02:19that some black holes formed from massive clouds of gas.
02:23They plan to use this and other results pouring in from Webb
02:26and those combining data from other telescopes, including Chandra,
02:30to help fill out a larger picture of black holes in the early universe.
02:49NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology