Astronomers have imaged a feeding black hole-powered quasar at the very edge of the universe, so far away that it was seen as it appeared less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang.The quasar, designated SDSS J114816.64+525150.3, is powered by a supermassive black hole over 3 billion times the mass of the sun located in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major. It was imaged by the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy using its 356 mm (14-inch) aperture robotic unit.”This is a record result, to my knowledge: Never before, in fact, has a 350mm aperture telescope looked so far back in space and time,” Virtual Telescope Project founder and astrophysicist Gianluca Masi told Space.com via email. “It is so far away that its light, observed today from Earth, started its journey almost 12.9 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 900 million years old, compared to the current age estimated at 13.8 billion years.”Related: Brightest quasar ever seen is powered by black hole that eats a ‘sun a day’SDSS J114816.64+525150.3 represents the most distant visible celestial body in the northern sky that is also observable in visible light, according to the astronomer.When discovered in SDSS J114816.64+525150.3, this quasar was the most distant ever spotted. In the intervening 20 or so years, astronomers discovered 8 quasars located further away. This includes P172+18, which remains the most distant quasar ever seen, located at 13.02 billion light years away, meaning we see it as it was when the 13.8 billio …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnAstronomers have imaged a feeding black hole-powered quasar at the very edge of the universe, so far away that it was seen as it appeared less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang.The quasar, designated SDSS J114816.64+525150.3, is powered by a supermassive black hole over 3 billion times the mass of the sun located in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major. It was imaged by the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy using its 356 mm (14-inch) aperture robotic unit.”This is a record result, to my knowledge: Never before, in fact, has a 350mm aperture telescope looked so far back in space and time,” Virtual Telescope Project founder and astrophysicist Gianluca Masi told Space.com via email. “It is so far away that its light, observed today from Earth, started its journey almost 12.9 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 900 million years old, compared to the current age estimated at 13.8 billion years.”Related: Brightest quasar ever seen is powered by black hole that eats a ‘sun a day’SDSS J114816.64+525150.3 represents the most distant visible celestial body in the northern sky that is also observable in visible light, according to the astronomer.When discovered in SDSS J114816.64+525150.3, this quasar was the most distant ever spotted. In the intervening 20 or so years, astronomers discovered 8 quasars located further away. This includes P172+18, which remains the most distant quasar ever seen, located at 13.02 billion light years away, meaning we see it as it was when the 13.8 billio …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
