Astronomers Spot 83 Super-massive Black Holes from Earliest Days of the Universe

Astronomers at the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii recently announced the discovery of 83 quasars, powered by super-massive black holes in the depths of space. Objects like these are found at the centers of galaxies, and they can have masses equal to millions or billions of stars the size of the Sun.

When the light seen from these objects left their source, the Universe was only around five percent of its current age. This discovery greatly increases the number of super-massive black holes (SMBH’s) seen in the early Universe.

“While they are prevalent in the present-day universe, it is unclear when they first formed, and how many of them exist in the distant early universe,” researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) report.

One of the most distant quasars ever seen, this object is roughly 13.05 billion light years from Earth. It appears red due to cosmic expansion and the absorption of light as it traveled through intergalactic space. Other objects in the photo include stars and galaxies. Image credit: NAOJ

This latest batch of SMBH’s, found 13 billion light years from Earth, were imaged by astronomers using the wide-field camera Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC), mounted to the Subaru Telescope. Previous studies of ancient SMBH’s only searched for the brightest quasars, resulting in the discovery of just the most-massive objects. In this new study, astronomers looked for super-massive black holes like those in our present-day Universe.