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Newfound
quasar wins title "most distant in the universe"
25
Feb 2000
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If
Guinness had a Book of Cosmic Records, a newly discovered quasar
in the constellation Cetus would make the front page. This distant
quasar easily skates past the previous record-holder, placing
it among the earliest known structures ever to form in the universe.
A
team of astronomers identified the candidate after nights of
deep, long-exposure imaging at the California Institute of Technology's
five-meter (200-inch) Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory
in California and at the National Science Foundation's four-meter
(157-inch) Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak, Ariz. A spectral analysis
of the quasar's light was then completed at the 10-meter Keck
Observatory telescope in Hawaii.
"As soon as we saw the spectrum, we knew we had something special,"
said Daniel Stern, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, who played a key role in the discovery. "In images,
quasars can look very much like stars, but a spectral analysis
of a quasar's light reveals its true character. This quasar
told us that it was 'an ancient' - one of the universe's first
structures."
Quasars
are extremely luminous bodies that were more common in the early
universe. Packed into a volume roughly equal to our solar system,
a quasar emits an astonishing amount of energy - up to 10,000
times that of the whole Milky Way galaxy. Scientists believe
that quasars get their fuel from super-massive black holes that
eject enormous amounts of energy as they consume surrounding
matter.
"This
one is unusual in that it is emitting a lot of ultraviolet light,
considering how young it is," said Hyron Spinrad, professor
of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and
the leader of the observing group. "It's less than a billion
years old, so it had to have grown its central black hole very
fast, faster than the one solar mass per year we estimate for
most quasars."
The
recent findings will be presented in an upcoming issue of the
Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Source:
Robert Sanders, Public Affairs
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NASA's
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Quasar
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Berkeley Astronomy Department
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