An artists impression of a black hole, where the black holes intense gravitational field distorts the space around it. The Hubble Space Telescope targets remote galaxies whose light passes really close to the centers of intervening fore-ground galaxies, which are anticipated to host supermassive black holes over a billion times the mass of the sun.
30 billion times the mass of our Sun
When the scientists included an ultramassive black hole in one of their simulations, the path taken by the light from the faraway galaxy to reach Earth matched the path seen in real images caught by the Hubble Space Telescope.
What the group had discovered was an ultramassive black hole, an item over 30 billion times the mass of our Sun, in the foreground galaxy– a scale rarely seen by astronomers.
This is the very first black hole discovered utilizing gravitational lensing and the findings were published today (March 29) in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
A video revealing how Astronomers used gravitational lensing to find a black hole 30 billion times the mass of the sun in a galaxy 2 billion light years away. Credit: Durham University
Recalling in cosmic time
The majority of the biggest great voids that we understand about are in an active state, where matter drew in near to the black hole warms up and launches energy in the form of light, X-rays, and other radiation.
Gravitational lensing makes it possible to study inactive great voids, something not presently possible in remote galaxies. This approach could let astronomers discover far more ultramassive and inactive black holes than previously thought and examine how they grew so large.
The story of this particular discovery drew back in 2004 when fellow Durham University astronomer, Professor Alastair Edge, observed a huge arc of a gravitational lens when evaluating pictures of a galaxy survey.
Fast forward 19 years and with the aid of some incredibly high-resolution images from NASAs Hubble telescope and the DiRAC COSMA8 supercomputer facilities at Durham University, Dr. Nightingale and his group were able to review this and explore it even more.
Checking out the mysteries of great voids
The group hopes that this is the primary step in enabling a much deeper exploration of the mysteries of great voids, and that future large-scale telescopes will help astronomers study much more distant black holes to get more information about their size and scale.
Recommendation: “Abell 1201: detection of an ultramassive great void in a strong gravitational lens” by J W Nightingale, Russell J Smith, Qiuhan He, Conor M ORiordan, Jacob A Kegerreis, Aristeidis Amvrosiadis, Alastair C Edge, Amy Etherington, Richard G Hayes, Ash Kelly, John R Lucey and Richard J Massey, 29 March 2023, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.DOI: 10.1093/ mnras/stad587.
The research was supported by the UK Space Agency, the Royal Society, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and the European Research Council.
This work used both the DiRAC Data Intensive Service (CSD3) and the DiRAC Memory Intensive Service (COSMA8), hosted by University of Cambridge and Durham University on behalf of the DiRAC High-Performance Computing facility.
Astronomers led by Durham University have discovered one of the biggest black holes ever discovered, with a mass over 30 billion times that of the Sun, by utilizing gravitational lensing and supercomputer simulations on the DiRAC HPC facility. This cutting-edge strategy, which mimics light traveling through the universe, allowed the scientists to accurately predict the lights path as seen in real Hubble Space Telescope images. An artists impression of a black hole, where the black holes intense gravitational field misshapes the space around it. This gravitational “lensing” impact provides an observation method to infer the presence of black holes and determine their mass, based on how significant the light flexing is. The Hubble Space Telescope targets distant galaxies whose light passes very close to the centers of intervening fore-ground galaxies, which are anticipated to host supermassive black holes over a billion times the mass of the sun.
Astronomers led by Durham University have actually found one of the largest great voids ever found, with a mass over 30 billion times that of the Sun, by using gravitational lensing and supercomputer simulations on the DiRAC HPC center. This groundbreaking technique, which simulates light traveling through the universe, allowed the scientists to precisely anticipate the lights path as seen in real Hubble Space Telescope images. The discovery has been released in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
A group of astronomers has actually discovered one of the most significant black holes ever found, taking benefit of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.
Light-bending gravity
The group, led by Durham University, UK, used gravitational lensing– where a foreground galaxy flexes the light from a more remote item and amplifies it– and supercomputer simulations on the DiRAC HPC center, enabled the group to carefully analyze how light is bent by a black hole inside a galaxy numerous millions of light-years from Earth.
The group simulated light traveling through deep space hundreds of countless times, with each simulation including a different mass great void, altering lights journey to Earth.