Astronomers Detect Farthest Active Supermassive Black Hole Yet

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA / CSA James Webb Space Telescope have discovered an active supermassive black hole in CEERS 1019, a galaxy that existed just over 570 million years after the Big Bang.

CEERS 1019 was discovered as part of Webb’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey.

The galaxy is not only notable for how long ago it existed, but also how relatively little its black hole weighs.

This black hole has a mass of about 9 million solar masses — far less than other black holes that also existed in the early Universe and were detected by other telescopes.

Those behemoths typically contain more than 1 billion times the mass of the Sun — and they are easier to detect because they are much brighter.

CEERS 1019’s black hole is more similar to Sagittarius A*the 4.3-million-solar-mass black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, and is not as bright as the more massive behemoths previously detected.

Though smaller, this black hole existed so much earlier that it is still difficult to explain how it formed so soon after the Universe began.

Astronomers have long known that smaller black holes must have existed earlier in the Universe, but it wasn’t until Webb began observing that they were able to make definitive detections.

“Looking at this distant object with this telescope is a lot like looking at data from black holes that exist in galaxies near our own. There are so many spectral lines to analyze,” said Dr. Rebecca Larson, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin.

Not only could the astronomers untangle which emissions in the spectrum are from the black hole and which are from its host galaxy, they could also pinpoint how much gas the black hole is ingesting and determine its galaxy’s star-formation rate.

They found CEERS 1019 is ingesting as much gas as it can while also churning out new stars.

They turned to the images to explore why that might be. Visually, CEERS 1019 appears as three bright clumps, not a single circular disk.

“We’re not used to seeing so much structure in images at these distances,” said Dr. Jeyhan Kartaltepe, an astronomer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

“A galaxy merger could be partly responsible for fueling the activity in this galaxy’s black hole, and that could also lead to increased star formation.”

The team also identified 11 galaxies that existed 470 to 675 million years after the Big Bang.

Not only are they extremely distant, the fact that so many bright galaxies were detected is notable.

“I’m overwhelmed by the amount of highly detailed spectra of distant galaxies Webb returned,” said Drs. Pablo Arrabal Haro, an astronomer at NSF’s NOIRLab.

“These data are absolutely incredible.”

These galaxies are rapidly forming stars, but are not yet as chemically enriched as galaxies that are much closer to home.

“Webb was the first to detect some of these galaxies,” said Dr. Seiji Fujimoto, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin.

“This set, along with other distant galaxies we may identify in the future, might change our understanding of star formation and galaxy evolution throughout cosmic history.”

The team’s papers about the CEERS data are published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.