Astronomers Find Three Luminous Dual Quasars

Using the Subaru Telescope and W. M. Keck and Gemini observatories, astronomers have spotted three dual quasars — merging galaxy systems that have two supermassive black holes on a collision course with each other.

Quasars are one of the most luminous, energetic objects known in the Universe, powered by supermassive black holes that are millions to billions times more massive than our Sun.

As material swirls around a black hole at the center of a galaxy, it is heated to high temperatures, releasing so much light that the quasar can outshine its host galaxy.

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Image credit: Silverman et al, doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/aba4a3

SDSS J141637.44+003352.2, a dual quasar at a distance for which the light reaching us was emitted 4.6 billion years ago. The two quasars are 13,000 light-years apart on the sky, placing them near the center of a single massive galaxy that appears to be part of a group, as shown by the neighboring galaxies in the left panel.

In the lower panels, optical spectroscopy has revealed broad emission lines associated with each of the two quasars, indicating that the gas is moving at thousands of kilometers per second in the vicinity of two distinct supermassive black holes. The two quasars are different colors, due to different amounts of dust in front of them.

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This dramatic image is the first to be produced by e-MERLIN, a powerful new array of radio telescopes linked across the UK.

The new image shows how the light from a quasar billions of light years away is bent around a foreground galaxy by the curvature of space. This light has been travelling for 9 billion years before it reached the Earth.

The quasar is a galaxy powered by a super-massive black hole, leading to the ejection of jets of matter moving at almost the speed of light - one of which can be seen arcing to the left in this new e-MERLIN image.

Astronomers have found a quasar that's more than five times more powerful than any previously seen.

Quasars are mega-bright geysers of matter and energy powered by super-massive black holes at the centers of young galaxies.