Quasars

Astronomers from Seoul National University, South Korea and elsewhere report the detection of 62 new luminous quasars as part of the All-sky BRIght, Complete Quasar Survey (AllBRICQS). The discovery was detailed in a research paper published August 8 on the arXiv preprint server.

Plenty of groups have been theorizing about primordial black holes (PBHs) recently. That is in part because of their candidacy as a potential source of dark matter. But, if they existed, they also had other roles to play in the early universe. According to a recent draft paper released on the arXiv preprint server by Jeremy Mould and Adam Batten of Swinburne University, one of those roles could be as the seeds that eventually form both quasars and radio galaxies.

Plenty of groups have been theorizing about Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) recently. That is in part because of their candidacy as a potential source of dark matter. But, if they existed, they also had other roles to play in the early universe. According to a recent draft paper released on arXiv by Jeremy Mould and Adam Batten of Swinburne University, one of those roles could be as the seeds that eventually form both quasars and radio galaxies.

A team of astronomers from Rhodes University and elsewhere have investigated a sample of 104 quasars detected with the MeerKAT International GHz Tiered Extragalactic Exploration (MIGHTEE) survey. The new study, published July 16 on the pre-print server arXiv, could help us advance our knowledge about quasars and their properties.

When black holes need a place to crash, they prefer a nice, bright quasar.

Quasars provide some of the most spectacular light shows in the universe. However, they are typically exceedingly rare since they are caused by massive astrophysical forces that don’t happen very often. So it came as quite a surprise when scientists found a group of 11 of them hanging on in the same general area, in what appeared to be equivalent to the galactic countryside. A new paper from Yongming Liang and their co-authors at the University of Tokyo describes this finding, which they dubbed the Cosmic Himalayas, and some of the weird astronomical circumstances that place the discovery in context.

Quasars are some of the brightest objects in the universe. A quasar is powered by large amounts of matter falling into the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy. Collisions and mergers between galaxies can cause quasar activity by feeding additional matter into the center of a galaxy.

By combining data from the Subaru Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope, researchers have discovered distant quasars that are obscured by dust but which may shed light on Little Red Dots.

An international team of astronomers has discovered 25 new quasars by analyzing multiwavelength data from various surveys. All the newfound quasars were detected at redshifts greater than 4.6. The findings are detailed in a research paper published May 21 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Quasars represent some of the most luminous and energetic phenomena in the universe. These distant powerhouses are driven by supermassive black holes—colossal gravitational engines with masses millions to billions of times that of our sun—which actively devour surrounding matter at incredible rates.

One of the unanswered questions in astronomy is just how supermassive black holes grew so big, so quickly. A team of astronomers have tried to answer this question by searching for actively feeding supermassive black holes (aka quasars) as a way to measure how much material material they are actually accumulating. They studied nebulae near the quasars that light up with the quasar is releasing radiation and found that many of the more distant quasars have only been active for a few hundred thousand years, not long enough to grow to the size we see today.

Using the Spektr-RG (SRG) space observatory, astronomers from the Russian Academy of Sciences have inspected a radio-loud quasar known as SRGA J2306+1556, which is extremely luminous in the X-ray band. Results of the new study are reported in a research paper published April 18 on the arXiv preprint server.

Chinese astronomers have investigated quasar candidates from the DESI Legacy Surveys (DESI-LS) photometry catalog. As a result, they detected 19 strongly-lensed, dual and projected quasars. The finding was reported in a paper published Jan. 15 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Astronomers have detected an intensely brightening and dimming quasar that may help explain how some objects in the early universe grew at a highly accelerated rate. The discovery is the most distant object detected by the NuSTAR X-ray space telescope (which launched in 2012) and stands as one of the most highly 'variable' quasars ever identified.

A Yale-led team of astronomers has detected an intensely brightening and dimming quasar that may help explain how some objects in the early universe grew at a highly accelerated rate.

After the Big Bang came the Dark Ages, a period lasting hundreds of millions of years when the universe was largely without light. It ended in the epoch of reionization when neutral hydrogen atoms became charged for the first time and the first generation of stars started to form. The question that has perplexed astronomers … Continue reading "This Quasar Helped End the Dark Ages of the Universe" The post This Quasar Helped End the Dark Ages of the Universe appeared first on Universe Today.

The term quasar comes from quasi-stellar objects, a name that reflected our uncertainty about their nature. The first quasars were discovered solely because of their radio emissions, with no corresponding visual objects. This is surprising since quasars blaze with the light of trillions of stars. In recent observations, the Hubble examined a historical quasar named … Continue reading "Hubble Gets its Best Look At the First Quasar" The post Hubble Gets its Best Look At the First Quasar appeared first on Universe Today.

Astronomers have used the unique capabilities of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to peer closer than ever into the throat of an energetic monster black hole powering a quasar. A quasar is a galactic center that glows brightly as the black hole consumes material in its immediate surroundings.

An international team of astronomers has observed an extremely radio-loud quasar known as J1601+3102. As a result, they found that the quasar hosts a large extended radio jet. The discovery is reported in a research paper published Nov. 25 on the arXiv preprint server.

In an article published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal, new evidence suggests how supermassive black holes, with masses of several billion times that of our sun, formed so rapidly in less than a billion years after the Big Bang.

At the centre of most galaxies are supermassive black holes. When they are ‘feeding’ they blast out jets of material with associated radiation that can outshine the rest of the galaxy. These are known as quasars and they are usually found in regions where huge quantities of gas exist. However, a recent study found a … Continue reading "Why are Some Quasars So Lonely?" The post Why are Some Quasars So Lonely? appeared first on Universe Today.

The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered lonely quasars in the early universe, with "empty larders" that defy theories surrounding their growth to monster sizes.

Astronomers from the European University Cyprus and the University of Hawaii have investigated a recently discovered obscured hyperluminous quasar known as COS-87259. Results of the study, published October 14 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, shed more light on the properties of this quasar.

Astronomers observed ancient quasars that appear to be surprisingly alone in the early universe. The findings challenge physicists' understanding of how such luminous objects could have formed so early on in the universe, without a significant source of surrounding matter to fuel their growth.

A quasar is the extremely bright core of a galaxy that hosts an active supermassive black hole at its center. As the black hole draws in surrounding gas and dust, it blasts out an enormous amount of energy, making quasars some of the brightest objects in the universe. Quasars have been observed as early as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, and it's been a mystery as to how these objects could have grown so bright and massive in such a short amount of cosmic time.

An international team of astronomers has employed the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to perform spectroscopic observations of a luminous quasar known as J1007+2115. They detected a fast outflow originating from the quasar's host galaxy. The finding was reported in a paper published September 20 on the pre-print server arXiv.

Observations confirm astronomers' expectation that early-Universe quasars formed in regions of space densely populated with companion galaxies. DECam's exceptionally wide field of view and special filters played a crucial role in reaching this conclusion, and the observations reveal why previous studies seeking to characterize the density of early-Universe quasar neighborhoods have yielded conflicting results.

Quasars are the most luminous objects in the universe and are powered by material accreting onto supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies.

In the contemporary Universe, massive galaxies are plentiful. But the Universe wasn’t always like this. Astronomers think that galaxies grew large through mergers, so what we see in space is the result of billions of years of galaxies merging. When galaxies merge, the merger can feed large quantities of gas into their centers, sometimes creating … Continue reading "This Ancient Galaxy Merger Will Produce a very Luminous Quasar" The post This Ancient Galaxy Merger Will Produce a very Luminous Quasar appeared first on Universe Today.

An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new hyperluminous quasar. The newfound quasar, which received the designation eFEDSJ0828–0139, has a high star-formation rate and its black hole is accreting mass at a super-Eddington rate. The discovery was detailed in a research paper published August 16 on the preprint server arXiv.

Chinese astronomers have conducted multi-frequency polarimetric observations of a quasar known as 1604+159. Results of the observational campaign, published August 13 on the pre-print server arXiv, shed more light on the properties of this quasar, including its morphology and magnetic field.

Quasars are extremely luminous galactic cores where gas and dust falling into a central supermassive black hole emit enormous amounts of light. Due to their exceptional brightness, these objects can be seen at high redshifts, i.e., large distances.

New photos from the James Webb Space Telescope show off the bewitching beauty of the warped quasar RX J1131-1231, which is adorned with four bright spots birthed by mind-bending space-time trickery.

It looks like a distant ring with three sparkly jewels, but the Webb telescope’s (JWST) most recent image is really the view of a distant quasar lensed by a nearby elliptical galaxy. The telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) looked at the faint apparition during a study of dark matter and its distribution in the Universe. We … Continue reading "Webb Looks at One of the Best Gravitationally Lensed Quasars Ever Discovered" The post Webb Looks at One of the Best Gravitationally Lensed Quasars Ever Discovered appeared first on Universe Today.

An international research group led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and comprising 34 research institutes and universities worldwide utilized the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to witness the dramatic interaction between a quasar inside the PJ308–21 system and two massive satellite galaxies in the distant universe.

This new picture of the month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features the gravitational lensing of the quasar known as RX J1131-1231, located roughly six billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Crater.

The James Webb Space Telescope observed a galaxy in a particularly young stage of the universe. Looking back into the past, it became clear that the light from the galaxy called J1120+0641 took almost as long to reach Earth as the universe has taken to develop to the present day. It is inexplicable how the black hole at its center could have weighed over a billion solar masses back then, as independent measurements have shown. The findings are published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Studying the history of science shows how often serendipity plays a role in some of the most important discoveries. Sometimes, the stories are apocryphal, like Newton getting hit on the head with an apple. But sometimes, there's an element of truth to them.

Studying the history of science shows how often serendipity plays a role in some of the most important discoveries. Sometimes, the stories are apocryphal, like Newton getting hit on the head with an apple. But sometimes, there’s an element of truth to them. That was the case for a new discovery of the oldest pair … Continue reading "The Earliest Merging Quasars Ever Seen" The post The Earliest Merging Quasars Ever Seen appeared first on Universe Today.

With the help of the powerful GNIRS instrument on the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab, a team of astronomers have discovered a double-record-breaking pair of quasars. Not only are they the most distant pair of merging quasars ever found, but also the only pair confirmed in the bygone era of the Universe's earliest formation.

A team of astronomers has spotted the most distant merging galactic cores yet, seen as they were when the universe was less than a billion years old. The duo of active galactic centers, called quasars, is the only confirmed pair seen during the Cosmic Dawn. Read more...

Competition to secure observing time for the world’s most powerful space telescope is stiff – so stiff that

SRON astronomers have for the first time mapped the outflows from one of the closest quasars to Earth. Quasars are bright cores of galaxies powered by the supermassive black hole in their center. The team has probed gas outflows in I Zwicky 1, a close-by quasar, to map its system of clouds being blown away at tens to thousands of kilometers per second. Their findings are published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Using the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, astronomers have detected a pair of merging quasars at a high redshift, as part of the Hyper SuprimeCam (HSC) Subaru Strategic Program (SPP) survey. The serendipitous discovery is reported in the latest issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Astronomers observed the elusive starlight surrounding some of the earliest quasars in the universe. The findings may shed light on how the earliest supermassive black holes became so massive despite having a relatively short amount of cosmic time in which to grow.

The observations suggest some of earliest 'monster' black holes grew from massive cosmic seeds.

MIT astronomers have observed the elusive starlight surrounding some of the earliest quasars in the universe. The distant signals, which trace back more than 13 billion years to the universe's infancy, are revealing clues to how the very first black holes and galaxies evolved.

Using the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, an international team of astronomers has inspected a luminous quasar known as PDS 456. Results of the observational campaign, published March 26 on the pre-print server arXiv, shed more light on the ionized emission from this quasar.

Quasars are the brightest objects in the Universe. The most powerful ones are thousands of times more luminous than entire galaxies. They’re the visible part of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of a galaxy. The intense light comes from gas drawn toward the black hole, emitting light across several wavelengths as it … Continue reading "This New Map of 1.3 Million Quasars Is A Powerful Tool" The post This New Map of 1.3 Million Quasars Is A Powerful Tool appeared first on Universe Today.

In its first year of operation, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) made some profound discoveries. These included providing the sharpest views of iconic cosmic structures (like the Pillars of Creation), transmission spectra from exoplanet atmospheres, and breathtaking views of Jupiter, its largest moons, Saturn’s rings, its largest moon Titan, and Enceladus’ plumes. But Webb … Continue reading "Little Red Dots in Webb Photos Turned Out to Be Quasars" The post Little Red Dots in Webb Photos Turned Out to Be Quasars appeared first on Universe Today.

Scientists think that by studying a cluster of "baby quasars," they can get a better understanding of supermassive black holes in the early universe.

The James Webb Space Telescope makes one of the most unexpected findings within its first year of service: A high number of faint little red dots in the distant Universe could change the way we understand the genesis of supermassive black holes.

The James Webb Space Telescope makes one of the most unexpected findings within its first year of service: A high number of faint little red dots in the distant Universe could change the way we understand the genesis of supermassive black holes.

The James Webb Space Telescope has made one of the most unexpected findings within its first year of service: A high number of faint little red dots in the distant universe could change the way we understand the genesis of supermassive black holes.

European astronomers have conducted very long baseline interferometric (VLBI) observations of a radio jet structure in a powerful quasar known as PKS 2215+020. The collected VLBI data provide important insights into the properties of this jet, suggesting that PKS 2215+020 is a blazar. The findings were presented February 17 in the Universe journal.

Astronomers have characterized a bright quasar, finding it to be not only the brightest of its kind, but also the most luminous object ever observed. Quasars are the bright cores of distant galaxies and they are powered by supermassive black holes. The black hole in this record-breaking quasar is growing in mass by the equivalent of one Sun per day, making it the fastest-growing black hole to date.

The quasar, as bright as 500 trillion suns, has evaded astronomers for over 40 years because of its incredible luminosity

Using the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have characterized a bright quasar, finding it to be not only the brightest of its kind but also the most luminous object ever observed. Quasars are the bright cores of distant galaxies, and supermassive black holes power them.

Quasars are fascinating objects; supermassive black holes that are actively feasting on material from their accretion disks. The result is a jet that can outshine the combined light from the entire galaxy! There are smaller blackholes too that are the result of the death of stars and these also sometimes seem to host accretion disks … Continue reading "What are the Differences Between Quasars and Microquasars?" The post What are the Differences Between Quasars and Microquasars? appeared first on Universe Today.

Astronomers from the Steward Observatory in Tucson, Arizona and elsewhere report the detection of a new massive protocluster. The structure was found around a luminous quasar known as J0910–0414. The discovery was detailed in a paper published February 2 on the pre-print server arXiv.

Theoretical predictions have been confirmed with the discovery of an outflow of molecular gas from a quasar when the Universe was less than a billion years old.

Theoretical predictions have been confirmed with the discovery of an outflow of molecular gas from a quasar when the universe was less than a billion years old.

Within almost every galaxy is a supermassive black hole. Millions, sometimes billions of solar masses are locked within an event horizon of space and time. They can power luminous quasars, drive star formation, and change the evolution of a galaxy. Because of their size and abundance, supermassive black holes must have formed early in cosmic history. But how early is still an unanswered question. It's a focus of a recent study on the arXiv preprint server.

One of JWST's big tasks is to help astronomers understand how the early Universe came together, with dwarf galaxies merging into larger, more mature galaxies. Supermassive black holes at these galaxies' hearts also grew, shining as quasars within the first billion years. A new paper uses several extragalactic surveys by JWST to find dozens of compact galaxies that seem to host faint quasars as young as 650 million years after the Big Bang. The post Webb Sees Dozens Of Young Quasars in the First Billion Years of the Universe appeared first on Universe Today.

The newly identified quasar, observed 13.7 billion light-years away by the James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, could be an example of a heavy black hole "seed" in the early universe.

Yale’s Priyamvada Natarajan and colleagues have identified the oldest known X-ray quasar — offering compelling proof of a

A new study reveals that supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies, known as quasars, can sometimes be obscured by dense clouds of gas and dust in their host galaxies.

Through the study of the optical to extreme ultraviolet radiation generated by the accretion of supermassive black holes at the centers of quasars, Associate Professor Cai Zhenyi and Professor Wang Junxian from the Department of Astronomy at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have discovered that their spectral energy distribution is independent to the intrinsic brightness of quasars, overturning the traditional understanding in this field.

Dark matter turns supermassive black holes into energetic quasars consistently throughout history, with implications for the past evolution

A new simulation shows black holes ripping apart and consuming their accretion disk in a matter of months, which may explain why some quasars quickly brighten and dim

At the heart of large galaxies like our Milky Way, there resides a supermassive black hole (SMBH.) These behemoths draw stars, gas, and dust toward them with their irresistible gravitational pull. When they consume this material, there’s a bright flare of energy, the brightest of which are quasars. While astrophysicists think that SMBHs eat too … Continue reading "Gluttonous Black Holes Eat Faster Than Thought. Does That Explain Quasars?" The post Gluttonous Black Holes Eat Faster Than Thought. Does That Explain Quasars? appeared first on Universe Today.

A new Northwestern University-led study is changing the way astrophysicists understand the eating habits of supermassive black holes.

When you look at most galaxies in the Universe, you’re looking at the homes of supermassive black holes. It now appears that quasars, which are active galaxies spitting out huge amounts of radiation from the region around their black holes, also have massive dark matter halos. It turns out they’ve always had them. And, their … Continue reading "Quasars Have Always Had Dark Matter Halos" The post Quasars Have Always Had Dark Matter Halos appeared first on Universe Today.

At the center of every galaxy is a supermassive black hole. Beyond a certain size, these become active, emitting huge amounts of radiation, and are then called quasars. It is thought these are activated by the presence of massive dark matter halos (DMH) surrounding the galaxy, directing matter towards the center, feeding the black hole.

Scientists have discovered superbubble pairs generated by quasar-driven outflows of three red quasars for the first time.

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A team of astrophysicists with members from China, the U.S. and Germany has discovered ionized gas nebulae surrounding three luminous red quasars featuring pairs of "superbubbles." In their study, reported in the journal Science Advances, the team spotted and analyzed the superbubbles using data from the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii.

Colossal bubbles of hot gas observed around three distant, supermassive black holes are probably the result of powerful winds, which could also be preventing the formation of new stars in those galaxies

The universe is awash in gravitational waves. The collisions of massive objects such as black holes and neutron stars generate many of them. Now astronomers are wondering about the environments where these catastrophic events occur. It turns out they might need to look at quasars. The first gravitational wave detection happened in 2015. Since that … Continue reading "Want to Find Colliding Black Holes? Check the Disks Around Quasars" The post Want to Find Colliding Black Holes? Check the Disks Around Quasars appeared first on Universe Today.

New research, in the wake of the gravitational wave discoveries, sheds light on the environments that could lead to black hole merger events. The work is presented this week at the 2023 National Astronomy Meeting by Ph.D. student at the University of Oxford, Connar Rowan.

Quasars are the supermassive black holes at the centres of early galaxies. Scientists have unlocked their secrets to use them as 'clocks' to measure time near the beginning of the universe. With this tick-tock of the quasar clock, we can now chart time across the life of the cosmos.

Scientists have for the first time observed the early universe running in extreme slow motion, unlocking one of the mysteries of Einstein's expanding universe. The research is published in Nature Astronomy.

Scientists have discovered a pair of gravitationally bound quasars inside two merging galaxies that existed when the universe

Scientists have discovered a pair of gravitationally bound quasars inside two merging galaxies that existed when the universe

It wasn’t long after the Big Bang that early galaxies began changing the Universe. Less than a billion years later, they had already put on a lot of weight. In particular, their central supermassive black holes were behemoths. New images from JWST show two massive galaxies as they appeared less than a billion years after … Continue reading "860 Million-Year-Old Quasar Had Already Amassed 1.4 Billion Times the Mass of the Sun" The post 860 Million-Year-Old Quasar Had Already Amassed 1.4 Billion Times the Mass of the Sun appeared first on Universe Today.

For the first time, the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed starlight from two massive galaxies hosting actively growing black holes - quasars - seen less than a billion years after the Big Bang.