2024-03-04 08:45:43
A team from the International Astronomy Center was able to follow and photograph Quasar J0529-4351, which is considered one of the brightest astronomical objects in the universe. It was captured and photographed as it reached its maximum height (about 22 degrees) from the Al Khatam Astronomical Observatory in Abu Dhabi, according to what was confirmed by the International Astronomy Center. Member of the International Astronomy Center, and President of the Jordanian Astronomical Society, Ammar Sakkji.
Al-Sakkji told Al-Mamlaka that the brightness of the quasar was magnitude 15.7, and the limit magnitude on that day and in that spot in the sky was 17, explaining that the captured image was a collection of several images, and the exposure time for each image was 3 minutes.
The “quasar” appears in the picture in the form of a star between the two yellow lines, as observing the “quasar” light takes 12 billion years to reach the Arab region, and it forms a message of faint lights coming from the early past of the universe, and gives a unique glimpse into the childhood of the universe, according to Al-Sakkji. .
“Quasars” are the compressed areas around a black hole or black holes in the nuclei of active galaxies, where black holes devour the matter surrounding them, and as a result of the collapse of matter during the devouring stage, they emit huge amounts of energy and light. “Quasars” are considered among the brightest cosmic objects. Which means that even very distant objects can be seen or monitored from Earth, as was done yesterday at the Al Khatam Astronomical Observatory.
The “quasar” was discovered using the large telescopes of the European Southern Observatory, and it is not only one of the brightest “quasars”, but it is the brightest object ever observed.
Al-Sakkji explained that the discovered “quasar” is 500 trillion times more luminous than the sun, and that the black hole in this “quasar” broke records, as it devours a large amount of material, about a star the size of the sun, every day, making it the largest black hole to date.
The mass of the quasar is 17 billion times the mass of the Sun and is located in the nuclei of active galaxies. It is more than 12 billion light-years away from Earth, and the accretion radius of the black hole is approximately equal to the distance between Earth and the star Alpha Centauri.
It is considered the largest accretion disk in the universe, and this discovery, formed 1.7 billion years after the Big Bang, “may put cosmic models to the test, especially theories of the formation of galaxies and giant black holes in the early past of the universe,” according to Al-Sakkji.
This “quasar” was observed through the “Schmidt” survey of the southern sky, in 1980, but it took decades of research and scrutiny to confirm that it is a “quasar.”
It was confirmed that the scientific research was published in the prestigious journal Nature Astronomy on February 19, 2024, and scientific research and analysis are still ongoing regarding this “quasar”, as astronomers propose to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to help detect the “quasars” found in Sky survey databases, according to Al-Sakkji.
The kingdom
#Arab #observatory #photographs #Quaser #brightest #astronomical #object #universe