Astronomers Spot Farthest Galaxy Known in the Universe

An artist’s conception of the most distant galaxy with a gamma-ray burst
Credit: Jingchuan Yu

Maunakea, Hawaii – An international team of astronomers using W. M. Keck Observatory have spectroscopic confirmation of the most distant astrophysical object known to date.

The researchers, led by Professor Linhua Jiang at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University, obtained near-infrared spectra with the Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infrared Exploration (MOSFIRE) on the Keck I telescope and successfully measured the distance of a very faint galaxy located 13.4 billion light-years away (redshift of z = 10.957).

Named GN-z11, the galaxy was generally believed to be at a redshift greater than 10, probably closer to 11, based on existing data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. But its exact redshift remained unclear, until now.

The results of the study, which are based on observations made under the time exchange program between Keck Observatory and Subaru Telescope on Maunakea, are published in the December 14, 2020 issue of the journal Nature Astronomy.

During their observations at Keck Observatory, the team also serendipitously detected a bright burst coming from the galaxy. After performing a comprehensive analysis, the team ruled out the possibility that the flash was from any known sources such as man-made satellites or moving objects in the solar system and determined it may have been produced by a gamma-ray burst.

A paper regarding this possible bright ultraviolet flash from GN-z11 is also published in the December 14, 2020 issue of Nature Astronomy.

Both studies are important to understanding the formation of stars and galaxies in the very early universe.

Source:  W.M. Keck Observatory/News

Learn more:

• “Spectroscopic Confirmation of the Most Distant Galaxy at Redshift 10.957” (Subaru Telescope Press Release, December 14, 2020)
• “Spectroscopic Confirmation of the Most Distant Galaxy at Redshift 10.957” (The Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University Press Release, December 15, 2020)
• “The Farthest Galaxy in the Universe” (The University of Tokyo Press Release, December 15, 2020)

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About MOSFIRE

The Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infrared Exploration (MOSFIRE), gathers thousands of spectra from objects spanning a variety of distances, environments and physical conditions. What makes this large, vacuum-cryogenic instrument unique is its ability to select up to 46 individual objects in the field of view and then record the infrared spectrum of all 46 objects simultaneously. When a new field is selected, a robotic mechanism inside the vacuum chamber reconfigures the distribution of tiny slits in the focal plane in under six minutes. Eight years in the making with First Light in 2012, MOSFIRE’s early performance results range from the discovery of ultra-cool, nearby substellar mass objects, to the detection of oxygen in young galaxies only two billion years after the Big Bang. MOSFIRE was made possible by funding provided by the National Science Foundation. It is currently the most in-demand instrument at Keck Observatory.

About W. M. Keck Observatory

The W. M. Keck Observatory telescopes are among the most scientifically productive on Earth. The two 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes on the summit of Maunakea on the Island of Hawaii feature a suite of advanced instruments including imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, integral-field spectrometers, and world-leading laser guide star adaptive optics systems. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at Keck Observatory, which is a private 501(c) 3 non-profit organization operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the Native Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain.

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Ancient Dead Galaxy Sets New Record

Artist’s impression of galaxy ZF-COSMOS-20115. The galaxy has likely blown off all the gas that caused its rapid star formation and mass growth, and rapidly turned into a compact red galaxy. Credit: Leonard Doublet/Swinburne University of Technology

Maunakea, Hawaii – An international team of astronomers has, for the first time, spotted a massive, inactive galaxy from a time when the Universe was only 1.65 billion years old. This rare discovery, made using the world-class W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii, could change the way scientists think about the evolution of galaxies.

This research publishes today in the journal Nature, with Professor Karl Glazebrook, director of Swinburne’s Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing , as the lead author. To characterize the faint galaxy, the discovery team used MOSFIRE, the most in-demand instrument on the 10-meter Keck I telescope.

“This observation was only possible due to the extreme sensitivity of the new MOSFIRE spectrograph,” said Glazebrook. “It is the absolute best in the world for faint near-IR spectra by a wide margin. Our team is indebted to the accomplishment of Chuck Steidel, Ian McClean, and all the Keck Observatory staff for building and delivering this remarkable instrument.”

Astronomers expect most galaxies from this epoch to be low-mass minnows, busily forming stars. However, this galaxy is ‘a monster’ and inactive.

The researchers found that within a short time period this massive galaxy, known as ZF-COSMOS-20115, formed all of its stars (three to five times more than our Milky Way today) through an extreme star-burst event.

But it stopped forming stars only a billion years after the Big Bang to become a quiescent or ‘red and dead’ galaxy – common in our Universe today, but not expected to exist at this ancient epoch.

The galaxy is also small and extremely dense, it has 300 billion stars crammed into a region of space about the same size as the distance from the Sun to the nearby Orion Nebula.

Astrophysicists are still debating just how galaxies stop forming stars. Until recently, models suggested dead galaxies or ‘red nuggets’ such as this should only exist from around three billion years after the Big Bang.

“This discovery sets a new record for the earliest massive red galaxy. It is an incredibly rare find that poses a new challenge to galaxy evolution models to accommodate the existence of such galaxies much earlier in the Universe,” said Glazebrook.

Media Contact: 

Mari-Ela Chock, W. M. Keck Observatory
(808) 554-0567
mchock@keck.hawaii.edu

Science Contact:

Liv Kivivali, Swinburne University of Technology
+61 3 9214 5428
lkivivali@swin.edu.au

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This research builds on an earlier Swinburne study that suggested such dead galaxies could exist based on finding dim red objects in extremely deep near-infrared images.

MOSFIRE spectrograph studies the faintest, most distant galaxies

In this latest study, astronomers used the Keck Observatory telescopes to confirm the signatures of these galaxies, through the new and unique MOSFIRE spectrograph. They took deep spectra at near-infrared wavelengths to seek out the definitive features signifying the presence of old stars and a lack of active star formation.

“We used the most powerful telescope in the world, but we still needed to stare at this galaxy for more than two nights to reveal its remarkable nature,” said co-author Professor Vy Tran, from Texas A&M University.

Even with large telescopes such as Keck Observatory’s 10-meter mirror, a long viewing time is required to detect absorption lines which are very weak compared to the more prominent emission lines generated by star-forming active galaxies.

“By collecting enough light to measure this galaxy’s spectrum, we decipher the cosmic narrative of what stars and elements are present in these galaxies and construct a timeline of when they formed their stars,” Professor Tran says.

The observed star-formation rate of this galaxy produces less than one fifth the mass of the Sun a year in new stars, but at its peak 700 million years previously this galaxy formed 5000 times faster.

“This huge galaxy formed like a firecracker in less than 100 million years, right at the start of cosmic history,” Professor Glazebrook says. “It quickly made a monstrous object, then just as suddenly it quenched and turned itself off. As to how it did this, we can only speculate. This fast life and death so early in the Universe is not predicted by our modern galaxy formation theories.”

Co-author Dr. Corentin Schreiber of Leiden University, who first measured the spectrum, speculates that these early firecrackers are obscured behind a veil of dust and that future observations using sub-millimeter wave telescopes will spot these.

”Sub-millimeter waves are emitted by the hot dust which blocks other light and will tell us when these firecrackers exploded and how big a role they played in developing the primordial universe,” says Dr. Schreiber.

With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018, astronomers will be able to build up large samples of these dead galaxies due to its high sensitivity, large mirror, and the advantage of no atmosphere in space.

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About MOSFIRE

Keck Observatory’s instrument, Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infrared Exploration (MOSFIRE), gathers thousands of spectra from objects spanning a variety of distances, environments and physical conditions. What makes this huge, vacuum-cryogenic instrument unique is its ability to select up to 46 individual objects in the field of view and then record the infrared spectrum of all 46 objects simultaneously. When a new field is selected, a robotic mechanism inside the vacuum chamber reconfigures the distribution of tiny slits in the focal plane in under six minutes. Eight years in the making with First Light in 2012, MOSFIRE's early performance results range from the discovery of ultra-cool, nearby substellar mass objects, to the detection of oxygen in young galaxies only two billion years after the Big Bang. MOSFIRE was made possible by funding provided by the National Science Foundation and astronomy benefactors Gordon and Betty Moore.

Researchers on the Discovery Team

• Swinburne University of Technology, Australia: Karl Glazebrook, Themiya Nanayakkara, Glenn G. Kacprzak
• Leiden University, Netherlands: Corentin Schreiber, Ivo Labbe
• University of Geneva, Switzerland: Pascal A. Oesch
• Texas A & M University, USA: Casey Papovich, Kim-Vy H. Tran
• Macquarie University, Australia: Lee R. Spitler
• Australian Astronomical Observatory: Lee R. Spitler
• Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany: Caroline M. S. Straatman
• The Australian National University: Tiantian Yuan

About W. M. Keck Observatory

The W. M. Keck Observatory operates the largest, most scientifically productive telescopes on Earth. The two, 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes on the summit of Maunakea on the Island of Hawaii feature a suite of advanced instruments including imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, an integral-field spectrometer and world-leading laser guide star adaptive optics systems. The Observatory is a private 501(c) 3 non-profit organization and a scientific partnership of the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA.

Source: W.M. Keck Observatory

Did Star Formation Regulation Change as the Universe Evolve?

An international team led by scientists at the Subaru Telescope and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich in Switzerland used the W. M. Keck Observatory (Note 1) to study the role of star formation rates in metal contents of distant galaxies. What they discovered is that the amount of metals is very similar irrespective of galaxies' star formation activity, raising new questions about star-forming theory. Their findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal this week.

Using the Keck I telescope – one of the two world's largest optical and infrared telescopes at Keck Observatory – equipped with the MOSFIRE (Note 2) instrument, the scientists gathered data on 41 normal, star-forming galaxies found in the Universe 11 billion years from today (Figure 1).

Figure 1: A galaxy observed in this study (surrounded by a blue rectangle). The light we received from the galaxy in the distant Universe tells us - from hydrogen, oxygen, and neon emission lines - that they followed a different rule to produce the heavy elements. (Credit: 3D-HST / NASA / ESA / STScI)

The team found typical galaxies forming stars in the Universe 2 billion years after the Big Bang have only twenty percent of metals (elements heavier than Helium) compared with those in the present day Universe. They also discovered the metal content is independent of the strength of the star-formation activity – in stark contrast with what is known for recently formed, or nearby galaxies (Figure 2). 

"The galaxies we studied are very faint because they are so far away that light needs more than 11 billion years to reach us," said Masato Onodera, the lead author of the paper. "Therefore, the superb light-gathering ability of the 10 meter Keck Observatory telescope was crucial to accomplish this study." He led the study while he was at ETH Zürich and hence moved to the Subaru Telescope.

Gathering the photons is only part of the job; breaking it down into data that could be analyzed by the team was the job of Keck Observatory's latest instrument, MOSFIRE.

"MOSFIRE allowed us to observe multiple objects simultaneously with an exquisite sensitivity, enabling us to collect spectra of many galaxies very efficiently," he said. "We saw number of spectral features emitted by ionized atoms in the galaxies such as hydrogen, oxygen, and neon, which allowed us to determine the metal content of the galaxies."

In addition to the telescope time awarded to them through the California Institute of Technology, the team utilized time exchange program between the 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope and the telescopes of Keck Observatory to complete the research.

Metal content in star-forming galaxies is the result of a complex interplay between gas coming into the galaxy, star formation in the galaxy, and gas outflowing from the galaxy in the cosmological context. How much metal is in the system and whether the correlation between the metal content and star formation activity exists provide important clues how galaxy evolve in a distant Universe.

Figure 2: A diagram showing the star formation rate (SFR) of distant galaxies (11 billion years ago) and today's galaxies (present) versus their metallicity. The former does not show any distinction in the metallicities with respect to the SFRs, while the latter is divided into two distinct metal contents according to their SFRs. Horizontal axis is the weight of the galaxy in the unit of solar mass. (Credit: NAOJ)

"If you extrapolate what is known in the local Universe, you would have expected a higher metallicity in less active star-forming galaxies than they found," said Hien Tran, staff astronomer at Keck Observatory who was not part of the finding. "It's part of the normal stellar and galaxy evolution. Onodera's team realized the role of star formation is not as strong at great distances as it is at zero distance. Understanding the interplay between metallicity, star formation rates and the mass of star forming galaxies will help us better understand galaxy evolution."

Because the team did not see any influence of the strength of star formation in the metal enrichment in distant galaxies, it is telling that the physical condition regulating star formation in galaxies in the early Universe is possibly different from that seen in the present-day Universe. This could be related to the fact that star formation rate cannot keep up with the gas accretion rate from the cosmic web.

The research paper appeared in May 1, 2016 issue of the on-line version of the Astrophysical Journal titled "ISM excitation and metallicity of star-forming galaxies at z~3.3 from near-IR spectroscopy" by Onodera, M., Carollo, C.M., Lilly, S., Renzini, A., Arimoto, N., Capak, P., Daddi, E., Scoville, N., Tacchella, S., Tatehora, S., and Zamorani, G.; doi:10.3847/0004-637X/822/1/42.

  

Notes

1. The W. M. Keck Observatory operates the two, 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes near the summit of Maunakea on the Island of Hawaiʻi, neighboring the Subaru Telescope.
2. MOSFIRE (Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infrared Exploration) is a highly efficient instrument that can take images or up to 46 simultaneous spectra. A sensitive state-of-the-art detector and electronics system enables MOSFIRE to obtain observations of very faint objects.

  Research Team

• M. Onodera: Institute for Astronomy, ETH Zürich, Switzerland and Subaru Telescope, USA
• C. M. Carollo: Institute for Astronomy, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
• S. Lilly: Institute for Astronomy, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
• A. Renzini: INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Italy
• N. Arimoto: Subaru Telescope, USA and SOKENDAI, Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Japan
• P. Capak: Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), USA and California Institute of Technology, USA
• E. Daddi: CEA, Laboratoire AIM-CNRS-Universite Paris Diderot, France
• N. Scoville: California Institute of Technology, USA
• S. Tacchella: Institute for Astronomy, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
• S. Tatehora: SOKENDAI, Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Japan
• G. Zamorani: INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, Italy

Links

• Preprint is available here.
• Press release from ETH Zürich is here.
• Press release from Keck Observatory is here.

Source: Subaru Telescope

New Record: Keck Observatory Measures Most Distant Galaxy

EGSY8p7 is the most distant confirmed galaxy whose spectrum obtained with the W. M. Keck Observatory places it at a redshift of 8.68 at a time when the Universe was less than 600 million years old. The illustration shows the remarkable progress made in recent years in probing early cosmic history. Such studies are important in understanding how the Universe evolved from an early dark period to one when galaxies began to shine. Hydrogen emission from EGSY8p7 may indicate it is the first known example of an early generation of young galaxies emitting unusually strong radiation. Credit: Adi Zitrin, California Institute of Technology, 2015

MAUNAKEA, Hawaii – A team of astrophysicists using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii has successfully measured the farthest galaxy ever recorded and more interestingly, captured its hydrogen emission as seen when the Universe was less than 600 million years old. Additionally, the method in which the galaxy called EGSY8p7 was detected gives important insight into how the very first stars in the Universe lit-up after the Big Bang. The paper will be published shortly in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Using Keck Observatory’s powerful infrared spectrograph called MOSFIRE, the team dated the galaxy by detecting its Lyman-alpha emission line – a signature of hot hydrogen gas heated by strong ultraviolet emission from newly born stars. Although this is a frequently detected signature in galaxies close to Earth, the detection of Lyman-alpha emission at such a great distance is unexpected as it is easily absorbed by the numerous hydrogen atoms thought to pervade the space between galaxies at the dawn of the Universe. The result gives new insight into `cosmic reionization’, the process by which dark clouds of hydrogen were split into their constituent protons and electrons by the first generation of galaxies.

“We frequently see the Lyman-alpha emission line of hydrogen in nearby objects as it is one of most reliable tracers of star-formation,” said California Institute of Technology (Caltech) astronomer, Adi Zitrin, lead author of the discovery paper. “However, as we penetrate deeper into the Universe, and hence back to earlier times, the space between galaxies contains an increasing number of dark clouds of hydrogen which absorb this signal.”

Recent work has found the fraction of galaxies showing this prominent line declines markedly after when the Universe was about a billion years old, which is equivalent to a redshift of about 6. Redshift is a measure of how much the Universe has expanded since the light left a distant source and can only be determined for faint objects with a spectrograph on a powerful large telescope such as the Keck Observatory’s twin 10-meter telescopes, the largest on Earth.

"The surprising aspect about the present discovery is that we have detected this Lyman-alpha line in an apparently faint galaxy at a redshift of 8.68, corresponding to a time when the Universe should be full of absorbing hydrogen clouds,” said co-author and Caltech astronomer Richard Ellis. “Quite apart from breaking the earlier record redshift of 7.73, also obtained at the Keck Observatory, this detection is telling us something new about how the Universe evolved in its first few hundred million years.”

Computer simulations of cosmic reionization suggest the Universe was fully opaque to Lyman-alpha radiation in the first 400 million years of cosmic history and then gradually, as the first galaxies were born, the intense ultraviolet radiation from their young stars, burned off this obscuring hydrogen in bubbles of increasing radius which, eventually, overlapped so the entire space between galaxies became `ionized’, that is composed of free electrons and protons. At this point the Lyman-alpha radiation was free to travel through space unimpeded.

It may be that the galaxy we have observed, EGSY8p7, which is unusually (intrinsically) luminous, has special properties that enabled it to create a large bubble of ionized hydrogen much earlier than is possible for more typical galaxies at these times,” said Sirio Belli, a Caltech graduate student who helped undertake the key observations. “EGSY8p7 was found to be both luminous and at high redshift, and its colors measured by the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes indicate it may be powered by a population of unusually hot stars.” 

Because the discovery of such an early source with powerful Lyman-alpha is somewhat unexpected, it provides new insight into the manner by which galaxies contributed to the process of reionization. 

Conceivably the process is patchy with some regions of space evolving faster than others, for example due to variations in the density of matter from place to place. Alternatively, EGSY8p7 may be the first example of an early generation which unusually strong ionizing radiation.

“In some respects, the period of cosmic reionization is the final missing piece in our overall understanding of the evolution of the Universe,” says Zitrin. “In addition to pushing back the frontier to a time when the Universe was only 600 million years old, what is exciting about the present discovery is that the study of sources such as EGSY8p7 will offer new insight into how this process occurred.”

The Caltech team reporting on this discovery consists of Zitrin, Ellis, and Belli who lead an international collaboration involving astronomers at Yale and the University of Arizona, and fellow European researchers from Leiden University in the Netherlands and the University of Durham and the Univeristy College London in England.

The research was funded in part by NASA.

The W. M. Keck Observatory operates the largest, most scientifically productive telescopes on Earth. The two, 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes near the summit of Mauna Kea on the Island of Hawaii feature a suite of advanced instruments including imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, integral-field spectrographs and world-leading laser guide star adaptive optics systems.

MOSFIRE (Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infrared Exploration) is a highly-efficient instrument that can take images or up to 46 simultaneous spectra. Using a sensitive state-of-the-art detector and electronics system, 

MOSFIRE obtains observations fainter than any other near infrared spectrograph. MOSFIRE is an excellent tool for studying complex star or galaxy fields, including distant galaxies in the early Universe, as well as star clusters in our own Galaxy. MOSFIRE was made possible by funding provided by the National Science Foundation and astronomy benefactors Gordon and Betty Moore.

Keck Observatory is a private 501(c) 3 non-profit organization and a scientific partnership of the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and NASA

Science contact

Adi Zitrin
California Institute of Technology
626-278-5854

adizitrin@gmail.com

Media contact 

Richard Ellis
California Institute of Technology
626-676-5530
rse@astro.caltech.edu

Source: W.M. Keck Observatory

Gigantic, Early Black Hole Could Upend Evolutionary Theory

In this illustration a black hole emits part of the accreted matter in the form of energetic radiation (blue), without slowing down star formation within the host galaxy (purple regions). Credit: M. Helfenbein, Yale University / OPAC. Hi-res image

Maunakea, Hawaii – An international team of astrophysicists led by Benny Trakhtenbrot, a researcher at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Astronomy, discovered a gigantic black hole in an otherwise normal galaxy, using W. M. Keck Observatory’s 10-meter, Keck I telescope in Hawaii. The team, conducting a fairly routine hunt for ancient, massive black holes, was surprised to find one with a mass of more than 7 billion times our Sun making it among the most massive black holes ever discovered. And because the galaxy it was discovered in was fairly typical in size, the study calls into question previous assumptions on the development of galaxies. Their findings are being published today in the journal Science.

The data, collected with Keck Observatory’s newest instrument called MOSFIRE, revealed a giant black hole in a galaxy called CID-947 that was 11 billion light years away. The incredible sensitivity of MOSFIRE coupled to the world’s largest optical/infrared telescope meant the scientists were able to observe and characterize this black hole as it was when the Universe was less than two billion years old, just 14 percent of its current age (almost 14 billion years have passed since the Big Bang).

Even more surprising than the black hole’s record mass, was the relatively ordinary mass of the galaxy that contained it.

Most galaxies host black holes with with masses less than one percent of the galaxy. In CID-947, the black hole mass is 10 percent that of its host galaxy. Because of this remarkable disparity, the team deduced this black hole grew so quickly the host galaxy was not able to keep pace, calling into question previous thinking on the co-evolution of galaxies and their central black holes.

“The measurements of CID-947 correspond to the mass of a typical galaxy,” Trakhtenbrot said. “We therefore have a gigantic black hole within a normal size galaxy. The result was so surprising, two of the astronomers had to verify the galaxy mass independently. Both came to the same conclusion.”

“Black holes are objects that possess such a strong gravitational force that nothing – not even light – can escape,” said Professor Meg Urry of Yale University, co-author of the study. ”Einstein’s theory of relativity describes how they bend space-time itself. The existence of black holes can be proven because matter is greatly accelerated by the gravitational force and thus emits particularly high-energy radiation.”

Until now, observations have indicated that the greater the number of stars present in the host galaxy, the bigger the black hole. “This is true for the local Universe, which merely reflects the situation in the Universe’s recent past,” Urry said.

Furthermore, previous studies suggest the radiation emitted during the growth of the black hole controlled, or even stopped, the creation of stars as the released energy heated up the gas. This cumulative evidence led scientists to assume the growth of black holes and the formation of stars go hand-in-hand.

The latest results, however, suggest that these processes work differently, at least in the early Universe.

The distant young black hole observed by Trakhtenbrot, Urry and their colleagues had roughly 10 times less mass than its galaxy. In today’s local Universe, black holes typically reach a mass of 0.2 to 0.5 percent of their host galaxy’s mass. “That means this black hole grew much more efficiently than its galaxy – contradicting the models that predicted a hand-in-hand development,” he said.

The researchers also concluded stars were still forming even though the black hole had reached the end of its growth. Contrary to previous assumptions, the energy and gas flow propelled by the black hole did not stop the creation of stars.

"From the available Chandra data for the source, we also concluded that the black hole has a very low accretion rate, and is therefore reached the end of its growth. On the other had, other data suggests that stars were still forming throughout the host galaxy," Trakhtenbrot said. 

The galaxy could continue to grow in the future, but the relationship between the mass of the black hole and that of the stars would remain unusually large. The researchers believe CID-947 could be a precursor of the most extreme, massive systems that we observe in today’s local Universe, such as the galaxy NGC 1277 in the constellation of Perseus, some 220 million light years away from our Milky Way.

The W. M. Keck Observatory operates the largest, most scientifically productive telescopes on Earth. The two, 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes near the summit of Mauna Kea on the Island of Hawaii feature a suite of advanced instruments including imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, integral-field spectrographs and world-leading laser guide star adaptive optics systems.

MOSFIRE (Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infrared Exploration) is a highly-efficient instrument that can take images or up to 46 simultaneous spectra. Using a sensitive state-of-the-art detector and electronics system, MOSFIRE obtains observations fainter than any other near infrared spectrograph. MOSFIRE is an excellent tool for studying complex star or galaxy fields, including distant galaxies in the early Universe, as well as star clusters in our own Galaxy. MOSFIRE was made possible by funding provided by the National Science Foundation and astronomy benefactors Gordon and Betty Moore.

Keck Observatory is a private 501(c) 3 non-profit organization and a scientific partnership of the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and NASA.

Science Contact

Benny Trakhtenbrot
ETH Zürich
Institute for Astronomy, Switzerland
benny.trakhtenbrot@phys.ethz.ch
+41 (0)44-632-4213

Media Contact

Steve Jefferson
W. M. Keck Observatory
sjefferson@keck.hawaii.edu
808-881-3827

Source: W.M. Keck Observatory