Two articles, one published in the journal “Nature” and one in the “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society”, report different aspects of a study of the supermassive black hole cataloged as Abell 2744-QSO1, or simply QSO1, indicating that it’s older than its host galaxy. A team of researchers used observations with the James Webb Space Telescope to study QSO1 and measured its mass at about 50 million times the Sun’s. This means it makes up at least two-thirds of the total mass of the galaxy, an anomaly that betrays its age and leaves open some possible hypotheses about its origin.

A rare example of three active galactic nuclei in three merging galaxies has been discovered using two radio telescopes: the VLA and the VLBA. The triple system, approximately 1.2 billion light-years from Earth, is cataloged as J1218/1219+1035. This targeted study, conducted by a team of researchers at various radio frequencies, has identified only the third case of a triple active galactic nucleus, the first confirmed through radio observations. This discovery is useful for better understanding certain galaxy merger processes, such as the ones that led to the formation of the Milky Way.

An article to be published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the discovery of about 2,500 new candidate active galactic nuclei in dwarf galaxies and about 300 new candidate intermediate-mass black holes. A team of researchers examined observations conducted with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) on the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope in Arizona to find all these possible black holes.

An article published in the journal Nature Astronomy reports the results of a study of seven galaxy clusters which contain various supermassive black holes that offers evidence that outbursts generated at these black holes help cool the gas they feed on. A team of researchers used observations with multiple instruments to examine seven galaxy clusters. Outbursts in the form of jets from the supermassive black holes in those clusters cool the gas by forming thin filaments. Some of that gas will eventually flow back toward those black holes, triggering more outbursts in a mechanism in which the black holes “cook” their own meals.

Two articles – one published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” and one in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” – report different aspects of a study of the blazar cataloged as VLASS J041009.05−013919.88, or simply J0410−0139, the most distant found so far. Two teams of researchers used several space and ground-based telescopes and some radio telescopes to obtain detections in various electromagnetic bands.