Astronomers discover brightest galaxy during ‘cosmic noon’

Names are a strange thing in astronomy. Sometimes scientists offer a simple and simple name, like the extremely large telescope. Other times, they offer unique survey names, such as Quasars. And sometimes they find names which, although descriptive in a certain sense, are completely misleading in others.

This is the case for small red points (LRD) – Galactic nuclei active in the early universe which appear as a small red dot in the images captured by any telescope found them. However, they actually represent black holes supermassive hundreds of millions of times the size of our sun.

A new article by Federica Loiacono and his colleagues from Istituto Nazionale Di Astrofisica in Italy describes one of these giants they found with the James Webb space telescope at a period of the early universe, about 11 billion years ago, known as “Cosmic Noon”. The results are published on the arxiv pre -printed server.

Cosmic Midi, the period of 10 to 11 billion years ago, is considered by astronomers as one of the most active periods in the history of the universe. Stars were formed and black holes were eating material at an unpaid pace before or since then. Finding LRDs during this period will provide key information on how black supermassive holes have formed during this period, potentially offering information on the more in-depth evolution of the universe from that moment.

Dr. Loiacono and his team found one, and, in another interesting denomination decision, they decided to call the latter LRD The Big Red Dot (Bird). It is not because it is bigger than the other LRDs found in the same time of time, but because it is brighter than all the other LRDs found so far. Since there have been several hundred, it is a fairly impressive feature for this particular discovery.

The bird was discovered using the intergalactic galaxies and gas of the James Webb telescope telescope in the survey on the era of reionization (Eiger), which was specially designed to check the zones around six notable quasars, including SDSS J1030 + 0524, the one that the bird was found nearby.

One of the most striking characteristics of the bird is that it explodes the gas helium at a rate of 830 km / s. This rapid evolution gas creates an absorption line in the data by blocking part of the light that researchers expected to see there.

Strangely, it is also relatively silent in two other spectra where LRDs are normally very active: X -rays and radio. The authors offer two theories to explain why Bird could be silent in the spectrum of X -rays. First, it could be blocked by a thick gas cloud which is essentially without dust, which, although possible, would be much more encompassing the black hole than the other examples.

Alternatively, Bird’s black hole could be to eat much faster than normal rates, so that the thick material disc is formed around it, blocking light. The absence of radio waves is more difficult to explain, although the authors undoubtedly have theories that simply have not been part of the newspaper.

Another important characteristic of the bird is that it is very similar to two other LRDs found in the same period of universal evolution. The “Rosetta Pierre” and the LRD Rubies-Blagn-1 represent the extremes of astronomical name conventions, as well as properties similar to the bird. They have similar helium gas outlets and are conventionally of the same expected size as Bird, despite his name.

Like JWST and other even more powerful telescopes put online, we will undoubtedly find more of these small red points, and we will therefore start to reconstruct the way the universe was back when he was a “adolescent”. It will take more time to determine if Bird will stand out from its peers, or if it is representative of a large mass of black holes still not discovered. Anyway, it will be good news for the future of astronomy.