NASA’s Chandra Observatory Detects One of the fastest-Growing Black Holes ever Observed
Cambridge,Mass. – NASA’s chandra X-ray Observatory has identified a quasar hosting a black hole with an exceptionally high rate of growth, offering new insights into the evolution of black holes and their impact on galactic environments. The quasar,designated RACS J0320-35,is located 12.8 billion light-years from Earth and is consuming matter at a rate equivalent too the mass of the Sun every two days.
This discovery addresses a scientific mystery surrounding the origin of powerful jets of particles emanating from some black holes, as observed in RACS J0320-35. The presence of such jets is unusual for quasars, suggesting a link between rapid black hole growth and jet formation.
The quasar was initially identified through a radio telescope survey using the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder, complemented by optical data from the Dark Energy Camera on the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at the Cerro tololo Inter-American Observatory in chile. Subsequent observations with the Gemini-South Telescope on Cerro Pachon, Chile, precisely steadfast the quasar’s distance.
Details of the findings are published in a paper accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and are currently available at https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aded0a.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program, with science and flight operations conducted by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge and Burlington, Massachusetts, respectively.
Further details about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission can be found at https://www.nasa.gov/chandra and https://chandra.si.edu.
The discovery is accompanied by an artist’s illustration depicting the quasar as a spiraling disk of orange, red, and yellow, with a central black hole represented as a black egg shape surrounded by brilliant yellow light. An inset X-ray image from Chandra shows the black hole as a white dot with a purple ring. The illustration also highlights a jet of particles blasting away from the black hole.
Contact:
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu
Corinne Beckinger
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov