The James Webb Space Telescope has opened up possibilities for scientists to explore unusual celestial objects, such as ancient galaxies that were once considered non-existent in theory.
Thanks to James Webb, scientists can observe much more about the universe’s past. Photo: NASA.
Now, as part of the Early Release Science Survey on Cosmic Evolution (CEERS) project, researchers have discovered the farthest active supermassive black hole ever observed from Earth, according to Engadget.
Thanks to the near and mid-infrared images captured by James Webb, researchers have identified a supermassive black hole in a galaxy they’ve named CEERS 1019.
They have also determined that this black hole existed only 570 million years after the Big Bang and has a mass about 9 million times that of the Sun. Furthermore, the data provided by the telescope has allowed them to conclude that the black hole is consuming a significant amount of gas and generating new stars.
CEERS team member Jeyhan Kartaltepe from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York explained, “The merging of galaxies can partly be responsible for driving activity in the black hole, and that can also lead to increased star formation.”
With a mass of 9 million times that of the Sun, this black hole is much smaller than other supermassive black holes previously discovered that typically contain masses over 1 billion times that of the Sun, making them brighter and easier to detect.
CEERS 1019 resembles the black hole at the center of our galaxy, which has a mass about 4.6 million times that of the Sun. NASA noted that scientists had long suspected the existence of smaller black holes in the universe, but it wasn’t until the James Webb Telescope became operational that they could confirm their presence.