Most Distant Black Hole Yet Observed By NASA Telescopes

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Data from Chandra X-ray telescope and James Webb Space Telescopes have revealed a black hole from 470 million years after the Big Bang.   Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart

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00:00Music

00:03Visit Chandra's beautiful universe.

00:07UHC-1

00:11Astronomers have discovered the most distant black hole yet seen in X-rays

00:15using two NASA telescopes, the Chandra X-ray Observatory

00:19and James Webb Space Telescope.

00:23The black hole is at an early stage of growth that had never been witnessed before,

00:27where its mass is similar to that of its host galaxy.

00:31This result may explain how some of the first supermassive black holes

00:35in the universe formed.

00:38By combining data from Chandra and Webb,

00:41a team of researchers was able to find the telltale signature

00:44of a growing black hole just 470 million years after the Big Bang.

00:50The extremely distant black hole is located in the galaxy UHC-1

00:55in the direction of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744.

01:00The galaxy cluster is about 3.5 billion light-years from Earth.

01:05However, the Webb data reveal that UHC-1 is actually much farther away than Abell 2744.

01:13At some 13.2 billion light-years away,

01:16astronomers are seeing UHC-1 when the universe was only 3% of its current age.

01:23By using over two weeks of observations from Chandra,

01:26the researchers were able to detect X-ray emission from UHC-1.

01:31This is a telltale signature of a growing supermassive black hole

01:35in the center of the galaxy.

01:38The X-ray signal is extremely faint, and Chandra was only able to detect it,

01:43even with this long observation,

01:45because of the phenomenon known as gravitational lensing

01:48that enhanced the signal by some 400%.

01:52This discovery is important for understanding how some supermassive black holes

01:56can reach colossal masses soon after the Big Bang.

02:00Do they form directly from the collapse of massive clouds of gas,

02:03creating black holes weighing between about 10,000 and 100,000 suns?

02:08Or do they come from explosions of the first stars

02:11that create black holes weighing only between about 10 and 100 suns?

02:16The researchers suggest this is the best evidence yet obtained

02:19that some black holes formed from massive clouds of gas.

02:23They plan to use this and other results pouring in from Webb

02:26and those combining data from other telescopes, including Chandra,

02:30to help fill out a larger picture of black holes in the early universe.

02:49NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

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