Astronomy

Webb discovers the incredibly distant galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1

By ScientifiCult 26 March 2025

Webb discovers the incredibly distant galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1 in mysteriously clearing fog of early Universe

Using the unique infrared sensitivity of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, researchers can examine ancient galaxies to probe secrets of the early universe. Now, an international team of astronomers has identified bright hydrogen emission from a galaxy in an unexpectedly early time in the Universe’s history. The surprise finding is challenging researchers to explain how this light could have pierced the thick fog of neutral hydrogen that filled space at that time.

A small, zoomed-in area of deep space. Numerous galaxies in various shapes are visible, most of them small, but two are quite large and glow brightly. In the very centre is a small red dot, an extremely faraway galaxy. Two lines of light enter the left side: these are diffraction spikes, visual artefacts, caused by a nearby bright star just out of view. — The incredibly distant galaxy GS-z13-1, observed just 330 million years after the Big Bang, was initially discovered with deep imaging from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Now, an international team of astronomers has definitively identified powerful hydrogen emission from this galaxy at an unexpectedly early period in the Universe’s history, a probable sign that we are seeing some of the first hot stars from the dawn of the Universe. This image shows the galaxy GS-z13-1 (the red dot at centre), imaged with Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) programme. These data from NIRCam allowed researchers to identify GS-z13-1 as an incredibly distant galaxy, and to put an estimate on its redshift value. Webb’s unique infrared sensitivity is necessary to observe galaxies at this extreme distance, whose light has been redshifted into infrared wavelengths during its long journey across the cosmos.
To confirm the galaxy’s redshift, the team turned to Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument. With new observations permitting advanced spectroscopy of the galaxy’s emitted light, the team not only confirmed GS-z13-1’s redshift of 13.0, they also revealed the strong presence of a type of ultraviolet radiation called Lyman-α emission. This is a telltale sign of the presence of newly forming stars, or a possible active galactic nucleus in the galaxy, but at a much earlier time than astronomers had thought possible. The result holds great implications for our understanding of the Universe.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, STScI, CSA, JADES Collaboration, Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), Ben Johnson (CfA), Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), Phill Cargile (CfA), J. Witstok, P. Jakobsen, A. Pagan (STScI), M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)

A key science goal of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has been to see further than ever before into the distant past of our Universe, when the first galaxies were forming after the Big Bang. This search has already yielded record-breaking galaxies, in observing programmes such as the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). Webb’s extraordinary sensitivity to infrared light also opens entirely new avenues of research into when and how such galaxies formed, and their effects on the Universe at the time known as cosmic dawn. Researchers studying one of those very early galaxies have now made a discovery in the spectrum of its light, that challenges our established understanding of the Universe’s early history.

Webb discovered the incredibly distant galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1, observed to be at just 330 million years after the Big Bang, in images taken by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) as part of the JADES programme. Researchers used the galaxy’s brightness in different infrared filters to estimate its redshift, which measures a galaxy’s distance from Earth based on how its light has been stretched out during its journey through expanding space.

The spectrum of light from the distant galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1 is graphed as a line from left (lower wavelengths) to right (higher wavelengths). The line rises where a wavelength in the spectrum is brighter, and falls where it is dimmer. A vertical red line labelled “Lyman-alpha emission z=13.05” marks a wavelength in the spectrum where there is a noticeable spike in brightness. The graph is labelled “NIRSpec | PRISM”. — The incredibly distant galaxy GS-z13-1, observed just 330 million years after the Big Bang, was initially discovered with deep imaging from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Now, an international team of astronomers has definitively identified powerful hydrogen emission from this galaxy at an unexpectedly early period in the Universe’s history, a probable sign that we are seeing some of the first hot stars from the dawn of the Universe. Data from NIRCam allowed researchers to identify GS-z13-1 as an incredibly distant galaxy, and to put an estimate on its redshift value. Webb’s unique infrared sensitivity is necessary to observe galaxies at this extreme distance, whose light has been redshifted into infrared wavelengths during its long journey across the cosmos.
To confirm the galaxy’s redshift, the team turned to Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument. This graphic shows the light from galaxy GS-z13-1, dispersed by NIRSpec into its component near-infrared wavelengths. This graphic indicates very bright Lyman-α emission from the galaxy, which has been redshifted to an infrared wavelength. Not only does this emission in GS-z13-1’s spectrum confirm the galaxy’s extreme redshift, it is a telltale sign of the presence of newly forming stars, or a possible active galactic nucleus in the galaxy. Appearing at a much earlier time than astronomers had thought possible, the discovery of this Lyman-α emission holds great implications for our understanding of the Universe.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, STScI, J. Olmsted (STScI), S. Carniani (Scuola Normale Superiore), P. Jakobsen

The NIRCam imaging yielded an initial redshift estimate of 12.9. Seeking to confirm its extreme redshift, an international team led by Joris Witstok of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom as well as the Cosmic Dawn Center and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, then observed the galaxy using Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument.

An area of deep space is covered by a scattering of galaxies in many shapes and in colours ranging from blue to whitish to orange, as well as a few nearby stars. A very small square is shown zoomed in, in a box to the left. In the centre a red dot, a faraway galaxy, is marked out by lines and labelled “Redshift (z)=13”, signifying its extreme distance. Two much larger galaxies are labelled “z=0.63” and “z=0.70”. The box is titled “JADES-GS-z13-1”. — The incredibly distant galaxy GS-z13-1, observed just 330 million years after the Big Bang, was initially discovered with deep imaging from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Now, an international team of astronomers has definitively identified powerful hydrogen emission from this galaxy at an unexpectedly early period in the Universe’s history, a probable sign that we are seeing some of the first hot stars from the dawn of the Universe. This image shows the location of the galaxy GS-z13-1 in the GOODS-S field, as well as the galaxy itself, imaged with Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) programme. These data from NIRCam allowed researchers to identify GS-z13-1 as an incredibly distant galaxy, and to put an estimate on its redshift value. Webb’s unique infrared sensitivity is necessary to observe galaxies at this extreme distance, whose light has been redshifted into infrared wavelengths during its long journey across the cosmos.
To confirm the galaxy’s redshift, the team turned to Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument. With new observations permitting advanced spectroscopy of the galaxy’s emitted light, the team not only confirmed GS-z13-1’s redshift of 13.0, they also revealed the strong presence of a type of ultraviolet radiation called Lyman-α emission. This is a telltale sign of the presence of newly forming stars, or a possible active galactic nucleus in the galaxy, but at a much earlier time than astronomers had thought possible. The result holds great implications for our understanding of the Universe.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, STScI, CSA, JADES Collaboration, Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), Ben Johnson (CfA), Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), Phill Cargile (CfA), J. Witstok, P. Jakobsen, A. Pagan (STScI), M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)

In the resulting spectrum, the redshift was confirmed to be 13.0. This equates to a galaxy seen just 330 million years after the Big Bang, a small fraction of the Universe’s present age of 13.8 billion years old. But an unexpected feature stood out as well: one specific, distinctly bright wavelength of light, identified as the Lyman-α emission radiated by hydrogen atoms.[1] This emission was far stronger than astronomers thought possible at this early stage in the Universe’s development.

“The early Universe was bathed in a thick fog of neutral hydrogen,” explained Roberto Maiolino, a team member from the University of Cambridge and University College London. “Most of this haze was lifted in a process called reionisation, which was completed about one billion years after the Big Bang. GS-z13-1 is seen when the Universe was only 330 million years old, yet it shows a surprisingly clear, telltale signature of Lyman-α emission that can only be seen once the surrounding fog has fully lifted. This result was totally unexpected by theories of early galaxy formation and has caught astronomers by surprise.”

Before and during the epoch of reionisation [2], the immense amounts of neutral hydrogen fog surrounding galaxies blocked any energetic ultraviolet light they emitted, much like the filtering effect of coloured glass. Until enough stars had formed and were able to ionise the hydrogen gas, no such light — including Lyman-α emission — could escape from these fledgling galaxies to reach Earth. The confirmation of Lyman-α radiation from this galaxy, therefore, has great implications for our understanding of the early Universe. Team member Kevin Hainline of the University of Arizona in the United States, says

“We really shouldn’t have found a galaxy like this, given our understanding of the way the Universe has evolved. We could think of the early Universe as shrouded with a thick fog that would make it exceedingly difficult to find even powerful lighthouses peeking through, yet here we see the beam of light from this galaxy piercing the veil. This fascinating emission line has huge ramifications for how and when the Universe reionised.”

The source of the Lyman-α radiation from this galaxy is not yet known, but it is may include the first light from the earliest generation of stars to form in the Universe. Witstok elaborates:

“The large bubble of ionised hydrogen surrounding this galaxy might have been created by a peculiar population of stars — much more massive, hotter and more luminous than stars formed at later epochs, and possibly representative of the first generation of stars”.

A powerful active galactic nucleus (AGN) [3], driven by one of the first supermassive black holes, is another possibility identified by the team.

The new results could not have been obtained without the incredible near-infrared sensitivity of Webb, necessary not only to find such distant galaxies but also to examine their spectra in fine detail. Former NIRSpec Project Scientist, Peter Jakobsen of the Cosmic Dawn Center and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, recalls:

“Following in the footsteps of the Hubble Space Telescope, it was clear Webb would be capable of finding ever more distant galaxies. As demonstrated by the case of GS-z13-1, however, it was always going to be a surprise what it might reveal about the nature of the nascent stars and black holes that are formed at the brink of cosmic time.”

The team plans further follow-up observations of GS-z13-1, aiming to obtain more information about the nature of this galaxy and origin of its strong Lyman-α radiation. Whatever the galaxy is concealing, it is certain to illuminate a new frontier in cosmology.

This new research has been published today in Nature. The data for this result were captured as part of JADES under JWST programmes #1180 (PI: D. J. Eisenstein), #1210, #1286 and #1287 (PI: N. Luetzgendorf), and the JADES Origin Field programme #3215 (PIs: Eisenstein and R. Maiolino).

Notes

[1] The name comes from the fact that a hydrogen atom emits a characteristic wavelength of light, known as “Lyman-alpha” radiation, that is produced when its electron drops from the second-lowest to the lowest orbit around the nucleus (energy level).

[2] The epoch of reionisation was a very early stage in the Universe’s history that took place after recombination (the first stage following the Big Bang). During recombination, the Universe cooled enough that electrons and protons began to combine to form neutral hydrogen atoms. Reionisation began when denser clouds of gas started to form, creating stars and eventually entire galaxies. They produced large amounts of ultraviolet photons, which gradually reionised the hydrogen gas. As neutral hydrogen gas is opaque to energetic ultraviolet light, we can only see galaxies during this epoch at longer wavelengths until they create a “bubble” of ionised gas around them, so that their ultraviolet light can escape through it and reach us.

[3] An active galactic nucleus is a region of extremely strong radiation at the centre of a galaxy. It is fuelled by an accretion disc, made of material orbiting and falling into a central supermassive black hole. The material crashes together as it spins around the black hole, heating to such extreme temperatures that it radiates highly energetic ultraviolet light and even X-rays, rivalling the brightness of the whole galaxy surrounding it.

Press release from ESA Webb.

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Genetics

Discovery of world’s oldest DNA breaks record by one million years

By ScientifiCult 7 December 2022

A new chapter in the history of evolution

Discovery of world’s oldest DNA breaks record by one million years

Two-million-year-old DNA has been identified for the first time opening a new chapter in the history of evolution.

Microscopic fragments of environmental DNA were found in Ice Age sediment in northern Greenland. The fragments are one million years older than the previous record for DNA sampled from a Siberian mammoth bone.

The ancient DNA has been used to map a two-million-year-old ecosystem which weathered extreme climate change. The results could help predict the long-term environmental toll of today’s global warming.

The discovery was made by a team of scientists led by Professor Eske Willerslev and Professor Kurt Kjær. Professor Willerslev is a Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge and Director of the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre at the University of Copenhagen where Professor Kjær, a geology expert, is also based.

The results of the 41 usable samples found hidden in clay and quartz are published today in Nature.

“A new chapter spanning one million extra years of history has finally been opened and for the first time we can look directly at the DNA of a past ecosystem that far back in time,” says Willerslev.

“DNA can degrade quickly but we’ve shown that under the right circumstances, we can now go back further in time than anyone could have dared imagine.”

“The ancient DNA samples were found buried deep in sediment that had built-up over 20,000 years,” says Kjær. “The sediment was eventually preserved in ice or permafrost and, crucially, not disturbed by humans for two million years.”

Close-up of organic material in the coastal deposits. The organic layers show traces of the rich plant flora and insect fauna that lived two million years ago in Kap København in North Greenland. Credits: Professor Kurt H. Kjær

The incomplete samples, a few millionths of a millimetre long, were taken from the København Formation, a sediment deposit almost 100 metres thick tucked in the mouth of a fjord in the Arctic Ocean in Greenland’s northernmost point. The climate in Greenland at the time varied between Arctic and temperate and was between 10-17C warmer than Greenland is today. The sediment built up metre by metre in a shallow bay.

Evidence of animals, plants and microorganisms including reindeer, hares, lemmings, birch and poplar trees were discovered. Researchers even found that Mastodon, an Ice Age mammal, roamed as far as Greenland before later becoming extinct. Previously it was thought the range of the elephant-like animals did not extend as far as Greenland from its known origins of North and Central America.

Detective work by 40 researchers from Denmark, the UK, France, Sweden, Norway, the USA and Germany, unlocked the secrets of the fragments of DNA. The process was painstaking – first they needed to establish whether there was DNA hidden in the clay and quartz, and if there was, could they successfully detach the DNA from the sediment to examine it? The answer, eventually, was yes. The researchers compared every single DNA fragment with extensive libraries of DNA collected from present-day animals, plants and microorganisms. A picture began to emerge of the DNA from trees, bushes, birds, animals and microorganisms.

A two million- year-old trunk from a larch tree still stuck in the permafrost within the coastal deposits. The tree was carried to the sea by the rivers that eroded the former forested landscape. Credits: Professor Svend Funder

Some of the DNA fragments were easy to classify as predecessors to present-day species, others could only be linked at genus level, and some originated from species impossible to place in the DNA libraries of animals, plants and microorganisms still living in the 21st century.

The two-million-year-old samples also help academics build a picture of a previously unknown stage in the evolution of the DNA of a range of species still in existence today.

“Expeditions are expensive and many of the samples were taken back in 2006 when the team were in Greenland for another project, they have been stored ever since,” says Kjær.

“It wasn’t until a new generation of DNA extraction and sequencing equipment was developed that we’ve been able to locate and identify extremely small and damaged fragments of DNA in the sediment samples. It meant we were finally able to map a two-million-year-old ecosystem.”

“The Kap København ecosystem, which has no present-day equivalent, existed at considerably higher temperatures than we have today – and because, on the face of it, the climate seems to have been similar to the climate we expect on our planet in the future due to global warming,” says co-first author Assistant Professor Mikkel Pedersen of the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre.

“One of the key factors here is to what degree species will be able to adapt to the change in conditions arising from a significant increase in temperature. The data suggests that more species can evolve and adapt to wildly varying temperatures than previously thought. But, crucially, these results show they need time to do this. The speed of today’s global warming means organisms and species do not have that time so the climate emergency remains a huge threat to biodiversity and the world – extinction is on the horizon for some species including plants and trees.”

While reviewing the ancient DNA from the Kap København Formation, the researchers also found DNA from a wide range of microorganisms, including bacteria and fungi, which they are continuing to map. A detailed description of how the interaction – between animals, plants and single-cell organisms – within the former ecosystem at Greenland’s northernmost point worked biologically will be presented in a future research paper.

It is now hoped that some of the ‘tricks’ of the two-million-year-old plant DNA discovered may be used to help make some endangered species more resistant to a warming climate.

“It is possible that genetic engineering could mimic the strategy developed by plants and trees two million years ago to survive in a climate characterised by rising temperatures and prevent the extinction of some species, plants and trees,” says Kjær. “This is one of the reasons this scientific advance is so significant because it could reveal how to attempt to counteract the devastating impact of global warming.”

The findings from the Kap København Formation in Greenland have opened up a whole new period in DNA detection.

“DNA generally survives best in cold, dry conditions such as those that prevailed during most of the period since the material was deposited at Kap København,” says Willerslev. “Now that we have successfully extracted ancient DNA from clay and quartz, it may be possible that clay may have preserved ancient DNA in warm, humid environments in sites found in Africa.

“If we can begin to explore ancient DNA in clay grains from Africa, we may be able to gather ground-breaking information about the origin of many different species – perhaps even new knowledge about the first humans and their ancestors – the possibilities are endless.”

Bibliographic information:

A 2-million-year-old ecosystem in Greenland uncovered by environmental DNA, Nature (7-Dec-2022), DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05453-y

Press release from the University of Cambridge on the discovery of world’s oldest DNA.

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Astronomy

Supermassive Black Hole Precursor Detected in Archival Hubble Data

By ScientifiCult 13 April 2022

Supermassive Black Hole Precursor Detected in Archival Hubble Data

An international team of astronomers using archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other space- and ground-based observatories have discovered a unique object in the distant, early Universe that is a crucial link between star-forming galaxies and the emergence of the earliest supermassive black holes. This object is the first of its kind to be discovered so early in the Universe’s history, and had been lurking unnoticed in one of the best-studied areas of the night sky.

Astronomers have struggled to understand the emergence of supermassive black holes in the early Universe ever since these objects were discovered at distances corresponding to a time only 750 million years after the Big Bang [1]. Rapidly growing black holes in dusty, early star-forming galaxies are predicted by theories and computer simulations but until now they had not been observed. Now, however, astronomers have reported the discovery of an object — which they name GNz7q — that is believed to be the first such rapidly growing black hole to be found in the early Universe. Archival Hubble data from the Advanced Camera for Surveys helped the team study the compact ultraviolet emission from the black hole’s accretion disc and to determine that GNz7q existed just 750 million years after the Big Bang.

“Our analysis suggests that GNz7q is the first example of a rapidly-growing black hole in the dusty core of a starburst galaxy at an epoch close to the earliest super massive black hole known in the Universe,” explains Seiji Fujimoto, an astronomer at the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and lead author of the paper describing this discovery. “The object’s properties across the electromagnetic spectrum are in excellent agreement with predictions from theoretical simulations.”

Supermassive Black Hole Precursor Detected in Archival Hubble Data: Crop of the GNz7q in the Hubble GOODS-North field. An international team of astronomers using archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other space- and ground-based observatories have discovered a unique object in the distant, early Universe that is a crucial link between young star-forming galaxies and the earliest supermassive black holes. This object is the first of its kind to be discovered so early in the Universe’s history, and had been lurking unnoticed in one of the best-studied areas of the night sky. The object, which is referred to as GNz7q, is shown here in the centre of the image of the Hubble GOODS-North field. **Credit:** NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz; Yale University), R. Bouwens and I. Labbé (Leiden University), and the Science Team, S. Fujimoto et al. (Cosmic Dawn Center [DAWN] and University of Copenhagen)

Current theories predict that supermassive black holes begin their lives in the dust-shrouded cores of vigorously star-forming “starburst” galaxies before expelling the surrounding gas and dust and emerging as extremely luminous quasars. Whilst they are extremely rare, examples of both dusty starburst galaxies and luminous quasars have been detected in the early Universe. The team believes that GNz7q could be the “missing link” between these two classes of objects.

“GNz7q provides a direct connection between these two rare populations and provides a new avenue towards understanding the rapid growth of supermassive black holes in the early days of the Universe,” continued Fujimoto. “Our discovery is a precursor of the supermassive black holes we observe at later epochs.”

Whilst other interpretations of the team’s data cannot be completely ruled out, the observed properties of GNz7q are in strong agreement with theoretical predictions. GNz7q’s host galaxy is forming stars at the rate of 1600 solar masses of stars per year [2] and GNz7q itself appears bright at ultraviolet wavelengths but very faint at X-ray wavelengths. The team have interpreted this — along with the host galaxy’s brightness at infrared wavelengths — to suggest that GNz7q is harbors a rapidly growing black hole still obscured by the dusty core of its accretion disc at the center of the star-forming host galaxy.

Supermassive Black Hole Precursor Detected in Archival Hubble Data: GNz7q in the Hubble GOODS-North field. An international team of astronomers using archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other space- and ground-based observatories have discovered a unique object in the distant, early Universe that is a crucial link between young star-forming galaxies and the earliest supermassive black holes. This object is the first of its kind to be discovered so early in the Universe’s history, and had been lurking unnoticed in one of the best-studied areas of the night sky. The object, which is referred to as GNz7q, is shown here in the centre of the cutout from the Hubble GOODS-North field. **Credit:** NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz; Yale University), R. Bouwens and I. Labbé (Leiden University), and the Science Team, S. Fujimoto et al. (Cosmic Dawn Center [DAWN] and University of Copenhagen)

As well as GNz7q’s importance to the understanding of the origins of supermassive black holes, this discovery is noteworthy for its location in the Hubble GOODS North field, one of the most highly scrutinised areas of the night sky [3].

“GNz7q is a unique discovery that was found just at the centre of a famous, well-studied sky field — showing that big discoveries can often be hidden just in front of you,” commented Gabriel Brammer, another astronomer from the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen and a member of the team behind this result. “It’s unlikely that discovering GNz7q within the relatively small GOODS-N survey area was just ‘dumb luck’ rather the prevalence of such sources may in fact be significantly higher than previously thought.”

Finding GNz7q hiding in plain sight was only possible thanks to the uniquely detailed, multi-wavelength datasets available for GOODS-North. Without this richness of data GNz7q would have been easy to overlook, as it lacks the distinguishing features usually used to identify quasars in the early Universe. The team now hopes to systematically search for similar objects using dedicated high-resolution surveys and to take advantage of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s spectroscopic instruments to study objects such as GNz7q in unprecedented detail.

“Fully characterising these objects and probing their evolution and underlying physics in much greater detail will become possible with the James Webb Space Telescope.” concluded Fujimoto. “Once in regular operation, Webb will have the power to decisively determine how common these rapidly growing black holes truly are.”

Notes

[1] Whilst light travels imperceptibly quickly in day-to-day life, the vast distances in astronomy mean that as astronomers look at increasingly distant objects, they are also looking backwards in time. For example, light from the Sun takes around 8.3 minutes to reach Earth, meaning that we view the Sun as it was 8.3 minutes ago. The most distant objects are the furthest back in time, meaning that astronomers studying very distant galaxies are able to study the earliest periods of the Universe.

[2] This does not mean that 1600 Sun-like stars are produced each year in GNz7q’s host galaxy, but rather that a variety of stars are formed each year with a total mass 1600 times that of the Sun.

[3] GOODS — the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey — is an astronomical survey that combines multi-wavelength observations from some of the most capable telescopes ever built, including Hubble, ESA’s Herschel and XMM-Newton space telescopes, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, and powerful ground-based telescopes.

Supermassive Black Hole Precursor: more information

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

These results have been published in Nature.

The international team of astronomers in this study consists of S. Fujimoto (Cosmic Dawn Center [DAWN] and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), G. B. Brammer (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), D. Watson (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), G. E. Magdis (DAWN, DTU-Space at the Technical University of Denmark, and Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark), V. Kokorev (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), T. R. Greve (DAWN and DTU-Space, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark), S. Toft (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), F. Walter ( DAWN, Denmark, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, USA), R. Valiante (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Rome, Italy), M. Ginolfi (European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany), R. Schneider (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Rome, Italy and Dipartimento di Fisica, Universitá di Roma La Sapienza, Rome, Italy), F. Valentino (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), L. Colina (DAWN, Copenhagen, Denmark and Centro de Astrobiología (CAB, CSIC-INTA), Madrid, Spain), M. Vestergaard (Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, USA), R. Marques-Chaves (Geneva Observatory, University of Geneva, Switzerland), J. P. U. Fynbo (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), M. Krips (IRAM, Domaine Universitaire, Saint-Martin-d’Hères, France), C. L. Steinhardt (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), I. Cortzen (IRAM, Domaine Universitaire, Saint-Martin-d’Hères, France), F. Rizzo (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), and P. A. Oesch (DAWN, Copenhagen, Denmark and Geneva Observatory, University of Geneva, Switzerland).

Press release from ESA/Hubble Information Centre

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