CEERS 1019 is a
black hole
A black hole is a massive, compact astronomical object so dense that its gravity prevents anything from escaping, even light. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will form a black hole. Th ...
in the galaxy previously identified as
EGSY8p7
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EGSY8p7 (EGSY-2008532660) is a distant galaxy in the constellation of Boötes, with a spectroscopic redshift of ''z'' = 8.68 (photometric redshift 8.57), a light travel distance of 13.2 billion light-years from Earth. Therefor ...
or z910_6811 and may be the oldest known black hole as of 2023. The galaxy and its black hole already existed about 570 million years after the Big Bang, and the black hole in the center of CEERS 1019 seems to be less massive than any other black holes identified in the early universe but still larger than black hole growth methods can currently explain.
The authors of a 2023 preprint describing it state that "We find that it is difficult to explain a SMBH of this mass ... with a stellar seed", i.e. gravitational collapse into a
stellar black hole
A stellar black hole (or stellar-mass black hole) is a black hole formed by the gravitational collapse of a star. They have masses ranging from about 5 to several tens of solar masses. They are the remnants of supernova explosions, which may be ...
. Its mass is 10
(3.8-21 million) solar masses.
Nitrogen Excess
Subsequent study of CEERS 1019 involved measurement of nitrogen abundance relative to oxygen (a standard reference point for metallcitiy) using ultraviolet lines emitted by oxygen, O III] 1660, and nitrogen, N IV] 1486 and N III 1750. Other abundances, such as carbon (measured from C III] 1909) follow the trends anticipated from observations of nearby galaxies and from stellar nucleosynthesis models. However, CEERS 1019 exhibits an excess of nitrogen relative to oxygen. This extra nitrogen may be related to very massive stars unique to the early universe and related stellar winds (similar to Wolf-Rayet stars in the nearby universe) actively enriching the ISM. The excess nitrogen in CEERS 1019 is similar to that seen in GN-z11 and may be characteristic of galaxies in the early universe.
See also
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CEERS-93316
CEERS-93316 is a high-redshift galaxy with a spectroscopic redshift z=4.9.
Significantly, the redshift that was initially reported was photometric redshift, photometric (z = 16.4) and would have made CEERS-93316 the earliest and most distant kn ...
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Direct collapse black hole
Direct collapse black holes (DCBHs) are high-mass black hole seeds that form from the direct collapse of a large amount of material. They putatively formed within the redshift range ''z''=15–30, when the Universe was about 100–250 million year ...
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List of the most distant astronomical objects
This article documents the most distant Astronomical object, astronomical objects discovered and verified so far, and the time periods in which they were so classified.
For comparisons with the light travel distance of the astronomical objects li ...
References
Sources
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{{2023 in space
Astronomical objects discovered in 2021
Supermassive black holes
Boötes