Hubble Gets its Best Look At the First Quasar

3C 273 is the uninspiring name given to the very first quasar to be linked with a visual object. Prior to that, quasars were known only by their radio emissions. The Hubble recently took a new, better look at the quasar, seen in this image. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and STScI

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 3C 273, the first quasar to be linked with a visual object.

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Scientists Develop Technique to Create 3D Models of Cosmic Structures

Milky Way centre by the MeerKAT array of 65 radio dishes in South Africa. Credit: SAROA

For decades, astronomers have used powerful instruments to capture images of the cosmos in various wavelengths. This includes optical images, where visible light is observed, and images that capture non-visible radiation, ranging from the radio and infrared to the X-ray and Gamma-ray wavelengths. However, these two-dimensional images do not allow scientists to infer what the objects look like in three dimensions. Transforming these images into a 3D space could lead to a better understanding of the physics that drives our Universe.

In a recent study, an international team of researchers led by the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics (MIfA) at the University of Minnesota announced the development of a new technique for radio astronomy. This first-ever technique reconstructs radio images into three-dimensional “Pseudo3D cubes” that allow astronomers to get a better idea of what cosmic structures look like. This technique could lead to an improved understanding of how galaxies, massive black holes, jet structures, and the Universe work.

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Jets From Supermassive Black Holes Create New Stars Along Their Trajectory

Artist's concept looking down into the core of the giant elliptical galaxy M87. Credit: NASA/ESA,/J. Olmsted (STScI)

Since the 1970s, astronomers have observed that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) reside at the centers of most massive galaxies. In some cases, these black holes accelerate gas and dust from their poles, forming relativistic jets that can extend for thousands of light-years. Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers observed the jet emanating from the center of M87, the supermassive galaxy located 53.5 million light-years away. To their surprise, the team observed nova erupting along the jet’s trajectory, twice as many as they observed in M87 itself.

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Finally! Astronomers Find the Missing Link Between Stellar and Supermassive Black Holes

Image of a black hole candidate, and potential intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH), within the globular cluster known as Omega Centauri. (Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Häberle)

While black holes are known as the most destructive objects in the universe, their evolution is largely shrouded in mystery. This is because while astronomers are familiar with supermassive black holes that exist at the center of galaxies like our own and black holes whose masses are less than 100 times the size of our Sun, the notion of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) have largely eluded discovery. However, this might change with the recent discovery of a black hole candidate that could exist within the globular cluster, Omega Centauri, and holds the potential to be the “missing link” in scientists better understanding black hole evolution.

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Galaxies Regulate their Own Growth so they Don’t Run Out of Star Forming Gas

A simulation of a galaxy’s ‘heart and lungs’ at work is pictured inset on an artist's impression of bi-polar jets of gas originating from a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy. Credit ESA/Hubble, L. Calçada (ESO) / C Richards/MD Smith/University of Kent Licence type Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

Look at most spiral or barred spiral galaxies and you will see multiple regions where stars are forming. These star forming regions are comprised of mostly hydrogen gas with a few other elements for good measure. The first galaxies in the Universe had huge supplies of this star forming gas. Left unchecked they could have burned through the gas quickly, generating enormous amounts of star formation. Life fast though and die young for such an energetic burst of star formation would soon fizzle out leaving behind dead and dying stars. In some way it seems, galaxies seem to regulate their star formation thanks to supermassive black holes at their centre. 

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A Supermassive Black Hole with a Case of the Hiccups

Artist’s illustration of a small black hole orbiting a supermassive black hole, resulting in the former producing bursts of energy from the supermassive black hole’s disk of gas and dust. (Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT)

Can binary black holes, two black holes orbiting each other, influence their respective behaviors? This is what a recent study published in Science Advances hopes to address as a team of more than two dozen international researchers led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) investigated how a smaller black hole orbiting a supermassive black hole could alter the outbursts of the energy being emitted by the latter, essentially giving it “hiccups”. This study holds the potential to help astronomers better understand the behavior of binary black holes while producing new methods in finding more binary black holes throughout the cosmos.

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The Brightest Object Ever Seen in the Universe

This artist’s impression shows the record-breaking quasar J059-4351, the bright core of a distant galaxy that is powered by a supermassive black hole. The light comes from gas and dust that's heated up before it's drawn into the black hole. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

It’s an exciting time in astronomy today, where records are being broken and reset regularly. We are barely two months into 2024, and already new records have been set for the farthest black hole yet observed, the brightest supernova, and the highest-energy gamma rays from our Sun. Most recently, an international team of astronomers using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile reportedly saw the brightest object ever observed in the Universe: a quasar (J0529-4351) located about 12 billion light years away that has the fastest-growing supermassive black hole (SMBH) at its center.

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The Event Horizon Telescope Zooms in on a Black Hole's Jet

The jet of the black hole in 3C 84 at different spatial scales. Credit: Georgios Filippos Paraschos (MPIfR)

Although supermassive black holes are common throughout the Universe, we don’t have many direct images of them. The problem is that while they can have a mass of millions or billions of stars, even the nearest supermassive black holes have tiny apparent sizes. The only direct images we have are those of M87* and Sag A*, and it took a virtual telescope the size of Earth to capture them. But we are still in the early days of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), and improvements are being made to the virtual telescope all the time. Which means we are starting to look at more supermassive black holes.

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Sometimes Compact Galaxies Hide Their Black Holes

Illustration of an active quasar. What role does its dark matter halo play in activating the quasar? Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
Illustration of an active quasar. New research shows that SMBHs eat rapidly enough to trigger them. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Quasars, short for quasi-stellar objects, are one of the most powerful and luminous classes of objects in our Universe. A subclass of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), quasars are extremely bright galactic cores that temporarily outshine all the stars in their disks. This is due to the supermassive black holes in the galactic cores that consume material from their accretion disks, a donut-shaped ring of gas and dust that orbit them. This matter is accelerated to close to the speed of light and slowly consumed, releasing energy across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

Based on past observations, it is well known to astronomers that quasars are obscured by the accretion disk that surrounds them. As powerful radiation is released from the SMBH, it causes the dust and gas to glow brightly in visible light, X-rays, gamma-rays, and other wavelengths. However, according to a new study led by researchers from the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy (CEA) at Durham University, quasars can also be obscured by the gas and dust of their entire host galaxies. Their findings could help astronomers better understand the link between SMBHs and galactic evolution.

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A Black Hole Switched On in the Blink of an Eye

This artist’s impression depicts a rapidly spinning supermassive black hole surrounded by an accretion disc. This thin disc of rotating material consists of the leftovers of a Sun-like star which was ripped apart by the tidal forces of the black hole. Shocks in the colliding debris as well as heat generated in accretion led to a burst of light, resembling a supernova explosion. Credit: ESO, ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser

In 2019, a team of astronomers led by Dr. Samantha Oates of the University of Birmingham discovered one of the most powerful transients ever seen – where astronomical objects change their brightness over a short period. Oates and her colleagues found this object, known as J221951-484240 (or J221951), using the Ultra-Violet and Optical Telescope (UVOT) on NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory while searching for the source of a gravitational wave (GW) that was thought to be caused by two massive objects merging in our galaxy.

Multiple follow-up observations were made using the UVOT and Swift’s other instruments – the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) and X-Ray Telescope (XRT), the Hubble Space Telescope, the South African Large Telescope (SALT), the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), and more. The combined observations and spectra revealed that the source was a supermassive black hole (SMBH) in a distant galaxy that mysteriously “switched on,” becoming one of the most dramatic bursts of brightness ever seen with a black hole.

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