Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2021

18 MAY-JUNE 2021 ASTRO PUBLISHING emitted by quasars is enormous, with the most massive examples eas- ily outshining entire galaxies. An in- ternational team of astronomers has announced the discovery of J0313- 1806, the most distant quasar known to date. “The most distant quasars are crucial for understanding how the earliest black holes formed and for understanding cosmic reioniza- tion — the last major phase transi- tion of our Universe,” said Xiaohui Fan, study co-author and Regents Professor of Astronomy at the Uni- versity of Arizona. J0313-1806 is seen more than 13 bil- lion years ago. As the most distant quasar known, it is also the earliest, being fully formed only about 670 million years after the Big Bang. The new quasar is more than ten trillion times as luminous as our Sun — meaning that it pours out one thou- sand times more energy than the entire Milky Way Galaxy. The source of this quasar’s power is a supermas- sive black hole 1.6 billion times as massive as the Sun — the earliest black hole currently known to exist in the Universe. The presence of such a massive black hole so early in the Universe’s history challenges theories of black hole formation as astronomers need to explain how it came into existence when it barely had the time to do so. Feige Wang, NASA Hubble fel- low at the University of Arizona and lead author of the research paper, explains: “Black holes created by the very first massive stars could not have grown this large in only a few hundred million years.” The observations that led to this dis- covery were made using a variety of telescopes, including three National Science Foundation NOIRLab facili- ties — the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter- American Observatory, Gemini South, and Gemini North. Data from the Blanco Telescope, taken as part of T his is CosmoView Episode 17 for press release noirlab2102: The earliest su- permassive black hole and quasar in the Universe. [Images and Videos: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva, ESO/M.Kornmesser, CTIO/D. Munizaga, Interna- tional Gemini Observatory/Kwon O Chul. Music: Stellardrone - Comet Halley] the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, which are served to the astronomi- cal community via the Astro Data Lab at NOIRLab’s Community Sci- ence and Data Center (CSDC), helped to first identify J0313-1806, while Gemini South observations were used to confirm its identity as a quasar. High-quality spectra from two Maunakea observatories in Hawai‘i — Gemini North and W. M. Keck Observatory — were used to measure the mass of the central su- permassive black hole. “The most distant quasars and earli- est black holes are important mark- ers in the history of the Universe,” said Program Director Martin Still of the National Science Foundation. “The researchers combined several of NSF’s NOIRLab facilities to make this discovery.” As well as weighing the monster black hole, the Gemini North and Keck Observatory observations un- covered an extremely fast outflow emanating from the quasar in the form of a high-velocity wind, which is traveling at 20% of the speed of light. “The energy released by such an extreme high-velocity outflow is large enough to impact the star for- mation in the entire quasar host galaxy,” said Jinyi Yang, Peter A. Strittmatter postdoctoral fellow of Steward Observatory at the Univer- sity of Arizona. This is the earliest known example of a quasar sculpt- ing the growth of its host galaxy, making J0313-1806 a promising tar- get for future observations. The galaxy hosting J0313-1806 is un- dergoing a spurt of star formation, producing new stars 200 times faster than the Milky Way. The combina- tion of this intense star formation, the luminous quasar, and the high- velocity outflow make J0313-1806 and its host galaxy a promising nat- ural laboratory for understanding the growth of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies in the early Universe. “This would be a great target to in- vestigate the formation of the ear- liest supermassive black holes, ” con- cluded Feige Wang. “We also hope to learn more about the effect of quasar outflows on their host galaxy — as well as to learn how the most massive galaxies formed in the early Universe.” !