Inbox Astronomy: NASA's Hubble Helps Astronomers Uncover the Brightest Quasar in the Early Universe

INBOX ASTRONOMY

NASA's Hubble Helps Astronomers Uncover the Brightest Quasar in the Early Universe

Release date: Jan 9, 2019 5:15 PM (EST)

Less than a billion years after the big bang, a monster black hole began devouring anything within its gravitational grasp. This triggered a firestorm of star formation around the black hole. A galaxy was being born. A blowtorch of energy, equivalent to the light from 600 trillion Suns, blazed across the universe. Now, 12.8 billion years later, the Hubble Space Telescope captured the beacon from this event. But Hubble astronomers needed help to spot it. The gravitational warping of space by a comparatively nearby intervening galaxy greatly amplified and distorted the quasar's light, making it the brightest such object seen in the early universe. It offers a rare opportunity to study a zoomed-in image of how supermassive black holes accompanied star formation in the very early universe and influenced the assembly of galaxies.

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Find the entire Hubble News archive, images, and videos at HubbleSite.org.

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute's Office of Public Outreach.

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