Black holes

The three primordial galaxies (Image courtesy JWST/NIRSpec, Bingjie Wang/Penn State)

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the results of the study of three very compact primordial galaxies with characteristics that can’t be explained by current cosmological models. A team led by researchers from Penn State University used observations conducted with the James Webb Space Telescope within the RUBIES survey to examine three objects that were considered mysterious for their strange characteristics.

In an article published in the journal “Nature” the researchers had already proposed that those were galaxies, and the new examination of the data confirms that. We see them as they were when the universe was between 600 and 800 million years old but their emissions indicate that they contain stars that are already relatively old and supermassive black holes with masses that were already enormous, perhaps more than the one at the center of the Milky Way.

From the left, the globular cluster Omega Centauri, its central area, and the area where the intermediate-mass black hole is probably located

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An article published in the journal “Nature” reports evidence that the globular cluster Omega Centauri contains an intermediate-mass black hole. A team of researchers led by Maximilian Häberle of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, used two decades of observations conducted with the Hubble Space Telescope to find that evidence. They did this by tracing the orbit of seven stars at the center of Omega Centauri that are moving fast due to an object with a mass that is at least 8,200 times the Sun’s. This also confirms the hypothesis that this star cluster is what remains of a dwarf galaxy absorbed by the Milky Way.

The quasar cataloged as RX J1131-1231, or simply RX J1131 (Image ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Nierenberg)

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A new image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope depicts the quasar cataloged as RX J1131-1231, or simply RX J1131. About six billion light-years away from Earth, it’s visible in three different copies, recognizable in the upper part of the bright ring in the center of the image, due to a gravitational lensing effect generated by a galaxy between it and Earth. In particular, MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) was used to observe RX J1131 with different mid-infrared filters as part of an observation program that studies dark matter.

The pair of quasars photographed by the Hyper Suprime-Cam mounted on Subaru Telescope

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An article published in the journal “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the discovery of the most distant pair of merging quasars known. A team of researchers combined observations from the Subaru Telescope with the Gemini North Telescope to find traces of this pair of quasars that we see as they were about 900 million years after the Big Bang.
Studying this pair of quasars can offer new insights into the epoch of reionization, the period that began about 400 million years after the Big Bang and was crucial in the history of the universe. That’s the time when the neutral, light-blocking hydrogen was ionized, resulting in the universe becoming the bright place we know today. An article accepted for publication in a journal of the American Astronomical Society offers further analysis based on observations conducted with the ALMA radio telescope.

Artist's illustration of two phases of the formation of a disk of gas and dust around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy SDSS1335+0728

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An article accepted for publication in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” reports the results of the observation of a new activity of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy cataloged as SDSS J133519.91+072807.4 and called “simply” SDSS1335+0728. A team of researchers used observations conducted with various instruments to observe an increase in this galaxy’s brightness. This already led to its inclusion among those with an active galactic nucleus at the end of 2019.