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Spitzer Leads NASA's Great Observatories to Uncover Black Holes, Other Hidden Objects in the Distant Universe
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By NASA
This illustration shows a red, early-universe dwarf galaxy that hosts a rapidly feeding black hole at its center. Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of astronomers have discovered this low-mass supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. It is pulling in matter at a phenomenal rate — over 40 times the theoretical limit. While short lived, this black hole’s “feast” could help astronomers explain how supermassive black holes grew so quickly in the early universe.NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/M. Zamani A rapidly feeding black hole at the center of a dwarf galaxy in the early universe, shown in this artist’s concept, may hold important clues to the evolution of supermassive black holes in general.
Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of astronomers discovered this low-mass supermassive black hole just 1.5 billion years after the big bang. The black hole is pulling in matter at a phenomenal rate — over 40 times the theoretical limit. While short lived, this black hole’s “feast” could help astronomers explain how supermassive black holes grew so quickly in the early universe.
Supermassive black holes exist at the center of most galaxies, and modern telescopes continue to observe them at surprisingly early times in the universe’s evolution. It’s difficult to understand how these black holes were able to grow so big so rapidly. But with the discovery of a low-mass supermassive black hole feasting on material at an extreme rate so soon after the birth of the universe, astronomers now have valuable new insights into the mechanisms of rapidly growing black holes in the early universe.
The black hole, called LID-568, was hidden among thousands of objects in the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s COSMOS legacy survey, a catalog resulting from some 4.6 million Chandra observations. This population of galaxies is very bright in the X-ray light, but invisible in optical and previous near-infrared observations. By following up with Webb, astronomers could use the observatory’s unique infrared sensitivity to detect these faint counterpart emissions, which led to the discovery of the black hole.
The speed and size of these outflows led the team to infer that a substantial fraction of the mass growth of LID-568 may have occurred in a single episode of rapid accretion.
LID-568 appears to be feeding on matter at a rate 40 times its Eddington limit. This limit relates to the maximum amount of light that material surrounding a black hole can emit, as well as how fast it can absorb matter, such that its inward gravitational force and outward pressure generated from the heat of the compressed, infalling matter remain in balance.
These results provide new insights into the formation of supermassive black holes from smaller black hole “seeds,” which current theories suggest arise either from the death of the universe’s first stars (light seeds) or the direct collapse of gas clouds (heavy seeds). Until now, these theories lacked observational confirmation.
The new discovery suggests that “a significant portion of mass growth can occur during a single episode of rapid feeding, regardless of whether the black hole originated from a light or heavy seed,” said International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab astronomer Hyewon Suh, who led the research team.
A paper describing these results (“A super-Eddington-accreting black hole ~1.5 Gyr after the Big Bang observed with JWST”) appears in the journal Nature Astronomy.
About the Missions
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
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NASA Headquarters
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Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
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lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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By NASA
4 min read
NASA’s Swift Studies Gas-Churning Monster Black Holes
A pair of monster black holes swirl in a cloud of gas in this artist’s concept of AT 2021hdr, a recurring outburst studied by NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory in California. NASA/Aurore Simonnet (Sonoma State University) Scientists using observations from NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have discovered, for the first time, the signal from a pair of monster black holes disrupting a cloud of gas in the center of a galaxy.
“It’s a very weird event, called AT 2021hdr, that keeps recurring every few months,” said Lorena Hernández-García, an astrophysicist at the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, the Millennium Nucleus on Transversal Research and Technology to Explore Supermassive Black Holes, and University of Valparaíso in Chile. “We think that a gas cloud engulfed the black holes. As they orbit each other, the black holes interact with the cloud, perturbing and consuming its gas. This produces an oscillating pattern in the light from the system.”
A paper about AT 2021hdr, led by Hernández-García, was published Nov. 13 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The dual black holes are in the center of a galaxy called 2MASX J21240027+3409114, located 1 billion light-years away in the northern constellation Cygnus. The pair are about 16 billion miles (26 billion kilometers) apart, close enough that light only takes a day to travel between them. Together they contain 40 million times the Sun’s mass.
Scientists estimate the black holes complete an orbit every 130 days and will collide and merge in approximately 70,000 years.
AT 2021hdr was first spotted in March 2021 by the Caltech-led ZTF (Zwicky Transient Facility) at the Palomar Observatory in California. It was flagged as a potentially interesting source by ALeRCE (Automatic Learning for the Rapid Classification of Events). This multidisciplinary team combines artificial intelligence tools with human expertise to report events in the night sky to the astronomical community using the mountains of data collected by survey programs like ZTF.
“Although this flare was originally thought to be a supernova, outbursts in 2022 made us think of other explanations,” said co-author Alejandra Muñoz-Arancibia, an ALeRCE team member and astrophysicist at the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics and the Center for Mathematical Modeling at the University of Chile. “Each subsequent event has helped us refine our model of what’s going on in the system.”
Since the first flare, ZTF has detected outbursts from AT 2021hdr every 60 to 90 days.
Hernández-García and her team have been observing the source with Swift since November 2022. Swift helped them determine that the binary produces oscillations in ultraviolet and X-ray light on the same time scales as ZTF sees them in the visible range.
The researchers conducted a Goldilocks-type elimination of different models to explain what they saw in the data.
Initially, they thought the signal could be the byproduct of normal activity in the galactic center. Then they considered whether a tidal disruption event — the destruction of a star that wandered too close to one of the black holes — could be the cause.
Finally, they settled on another possibility, the tidal disruption of a gas cloud, one that was bigger than the binary itself. When the cloud encountered the black holes, gravity ripped it apart, forming filaments around the pair, and friction started to heat it. The gas got particularly dense and hot close to the black holes. As the binary orbits, the complex interplay of forces ejects some of the gas from the system on each rotation. These interactions produce the fluctuating light Swift and ZTF observe.
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Watch as a gas cloud encounters two supermassive black holes in this simulation. The complex interplay of gravitational and frictional forces causes the cloud to condense and heat. Some of the gas is ejected from the system with each orbit of the black holes. F. Goicovic et al. 2016 Hernández-García and her team plan to continue observations of AT 2021hdr to better understand the system and improve their models. They’re also interested in studying its home galaxy, which is currently merging with another one nearby — an event first reported in their paper.
“As Swift approaches its 20th anniversary, it’s incredible to see all the new science it’s still helping the community accomplish,” said S. Bradley Cenko, Swift’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “There’s still so much it has left to teach us about our ever-changing cosmos.”
NASA’s missions are part of a growing, worldwide network watching for changes in the sky to solve mysteries of how the universe works.
Goddard manages the Swift mission in collaboration with Penn State, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and Northrop Grumman Space Systems in Dulles, Virginia. Other partners include the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the United Kingdom, Brera Observatory in Italy, and the Italian Space Agency.
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By Jeanette Kazmierczak
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Nov 13, 2024 Editor Jeanette Kazmierczak Related Terms
Astrophysics Black Holes Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Research Goddard Space Flight Center Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory Science & Research Supermassive Black Holes The Universe View the full article
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Tessa Keating is a public affairs specialist in the Office of Communications at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. Keating plans onsite logistics, serves as a protocol officer, and coordinates the Space Flight Awareness Program for NASA Stennis and the NASA Shared Services Center.NASA/Danny Nowlin Every task at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, is not simply work for Tessa Keating – it is a meaningful step toward a part of something great.
“It has been a dream career. I count it an honor to share the NASA story and humbled to know our team witnesses a part of history,” said Keating, a NASA public affairs specialist in the NASA Stennis Office of Communications. “Every day is an opportunity to contribute to the NASA legacy that will last beyond today. “
Keating plans onsite logistics, serves as a protocol officer, and coordinates the Space Flight Awareness Program for NASA Stennis and the NASA Shared Services Center. In fact, she organized much of the recent Space Flight Awareness Silver Snoopy Award ceremony at NASA Stennis in August, except for one part. As the ceremony finished, NASA Stennis Director John Bailey said one more award was to be given.
No one was more surprised than the logistics coordinator herself when Keating’s family joined her on stage. The 21-year NASA Stennis employee was honored for her outstanding contributions in sharing the NASA story of exploring the secrets of the universe for the benefit of all with a diverse audience and for equipping everyone with a broader knowledge and appreciation of the center’s vital role within NASA.
“I am not sure I will ever be able to top that in my NASA career,” Keating said.
It became a full-circle moment that she described as a great honor. The Silver Snoopy is the astronauts’ personal award and is presented to less than 1 percent of the total NASA workforce. Reid Wiseman, a NASA astronaut and commander for the upcoming Artemis II mission around the Moon, presented the award to Keating, along with a lapel pin flown aboard NASA’s Artemis I mission.
As NASA returns to the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for the Artemis Generation, Keating says it will be extra-special watching Wiseman and the Artemis II crew lay the groundwork for future milestones.
Keating helped lay the groundwork ahead of the successful Artemis I mission. She served as lead logistics for onsite guest operations in 2021 when NASA conducted the most powerful propulsion test in more than 40 years at NASA Stennis. A full-duration hot fire of the first SLS (Space Launch System) core stage and its four RS-25 engines culminated a year-long series of integrated tests. Keating coordinated the viewing of the hot fire for some 200 agency leaders and guests, despite restricted settings due to COVID-19.
“It was truly a highlight. I had grown up hearing my parents and grandparents talk about engines that were tested during the Apollo era, and I had never experienced something of that magnitude,” Keating said. “I was able to live it, feel it, and watch the next part of NASA history onsite.”
For Keating, the groundwork for a NASA career came following graduation with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from William Carey University and a master’s degree in Communications from The University of Southern Mississippi, both schools in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Having grown up in Pearl River County, Mississippi, for most of her life, she knew about NASA Stennis. However, she did not think she could ever work at the center because her strengths were in areas beyond math and science.
Following some additional exploration and conversations with influential people in her life, Keating discovered she, in fact, could be a part of something great at NASA Stennis.
“The possibilities are endless at NASA when you allow yourself to put your best foot forward and research the many opportunities that are available. There is always room for various types of studies,” Keating said. “I credit where I am in my career to God and to the people who have helped to guide my path. I will be forever grateful.”
Learn more about the people who work at NASA Stennis View the full article
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By USH
Last Monday, paraglider Alex Lang was flying high above the Great Pyramid of Giza when he noticed unexpected movement at its peak. To his surprise, it wasn't a person, but a dog perched at the top of the ancient monument.
Image credit: Alex Lang.
Lang, who recorded the bizarre sighting, described the dog barking and chasing birds from the very summit of the pyramid.
The footage left people both fascinated and confused, wondering how the dog had managed to scale such an immense structure. Some even joked that it might be a manifestation of Anubis, god of funerary practices and care of the dead. However, the main concern was whether the dog could safely make its way back down.
Luckily, a few days later, the dog was captured on video making its way down the ancient landmark, appearing calm and unscathed, as if the climb had been no big deal.
Image credit: abcnews.
Link video dog making its way down.https://www.tiktok.com/@abcnews/video/7427042186371386654/View the full article
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
New findings using data from NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) mission offer unprecedented insight into the shape and nature of a structure important to black holes called a corona.
A corona is a shifting plasma region that is part of the flow of matter onto a black hole, about which scientists have only a theoretical understanding. The new results reveal the corona’s shape for the first time, and may aid scientists’ understanding of the corona’s role in feeding and sustaining black holes.
This illustration of material swirling around a black hole highlights a particular feature, called the “corona,” that shines brightly in X-ray light. In this depiction, the corona can be seen as a purple haze floating above the underlying accretion disk, and extending slightly inside of its inner edge. The material within the inner accretion disk is incredibly hot and would glow with a blinding blue-white light, but here has been reduced in brightness to make the corona stand out with better contrast. Its purple color is purely illustrative, standing in for the X-ray glow that would not be obvious in visible light. The warp in the disk is a realistic representation of how the black hole’s immense gravity acts like an optical lens, distorting our view of the flat disk that encircles it. NASA/Caltech-IPAC/Robert Hurt Many black holes, so named because not even light can escape their titanic gravity, are surrounded by accretion disks, debris-cluttered whirlpools of gas. Some black holes also have relativistic jets – ultra-powerful outbursts of matter hurled into space at high speed by black holes that are actively eating material in their surroundings.
Less well known, perhaps, is that snacking black holes, much like Earth’s Sun and other stars, also possess a superheated corona. While the Sun’s corona, which is the star’s outermost atmosphere, burns at roughly 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of a black hole corona is estimated at billions of degrees.
Astrophysicists previously identified coronae among stellar-mass black holes – those formed by a star’s collapse – and supermassive black holes such as the one at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy.
“Scientists have long speculated on the makeup and geometry of the corona,” said Lynne Saade, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and lead author of the new findings. “Is it a sphere above and below the black hole, or an atmosphere generated by the accretion disk, or perhaps plasma located at the base of the jets?”
Enter IXPE, which specializes in X-ray polarization, the characteristic of light that helps map the shape and structure of even the most powerful energy sources, illuminating their inner workings even when the objects are too small, bright, or distant to see directly. Just as we can safely observe the Sun’s corona during a total solar eclipse, IXPE provides the means to clearly study the black hole’s accretion geometry, or the shape and structure of its accretion disk and related structures, including the corona.
“X-ray polarization provides a new way to examine black hole accretion geometry,” Saade said. “If the accretion geometry of black holes is similar regardless of mass, we expect the same to be true of their polarization properties.”
IXPE demonstrated that, among all black holes for which coronal properties could be directly measured via polarization, the corona was found to be extended in the same direction as the accretion disk – providing, for the first time, clues to the corona’s shape and clear evidence of its relationship to the accretion disk. The results rule out the possibility that the corona is shaped like a lamppost hovering over the disk.
The research team studied data from IXPE’s observations of 12 black holes, among them Cygnus X-1 and Cygnus X-3, stellar-mass binary black hole systems about 7,000 and 37,000 light-years from Earth, respectively, and LMC X-1 and LMC X-3, stellar-mass black holes in the Large Magellanic Cloud more than 165,000 light-years away. IXPE also observed a number of supermassive black holes, including the one at the center of the Circinus galaxy, 13 million light-years from Earth, and those in galaxies NGC 1068 and NGC 4151, 47 million light-years away and nearly 62 million light-years away, respectively.
Stellar mass black holes typically have a mass roughly 10 to 30 times that of Earth’s Sun, whereas supermassive black holes may have a mass that is millions to tens of billions of times larger. Despite these vast differences in scale, IXPE data suggests both types of black holes create accretion disks of similar geometry.
That’s surprising, said Marshall astrophysicist Philip Kaaret, principal investigator for the IXPE mission, because the way the two types are fed is completely different.
“Stellar-mass black holes rip mass from their companion stars, whereas supermassive black holes devour everything around them,” he said. “Yet the accretion mechanism functions much the same way.”
That’s an exciting prospect, Saade said, because it suggests that studies of stellar-mass black holes – typically much closer to Earth than their much more massive cousins – can help shed new light on properties of supermassive black holes as well.
The team next hopes to make additional examinations of both types.
Saade anticipates there’s much more to glean from X-ray studies of these behemoths. “IXPE has provided the first opportunity in a long time for X-ray astronomy to reveal the underlying processes of accretion and unlock new findings about black holes,” she said.
The complete findings are available in the latest issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
More about IXPE
IXPE, which continues to provide unprecedented data enabling groundbreaking discoveries about celestial objects across the universe, is a joint NASA and Italian Space Agency mission with partners and science collaborators in 12 countries. IXPE is led by Marshall. Ball Aerospace, headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, manages spacecraft operations together with the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder.
Learn more about IXPE’s ongoing mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/ixpe
Elizabeth Landau
NASA Headquarters
elizabeth.r.landau@nasa.gov
202-358-0845
Lane Figueroa
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
256-544-0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Oct 17, 2024 EditorBeth RidgewayLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
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