Using the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) telescope, astronomers discovered a new bright quasar at a redshift of about 6.8. This first-discovered quasar, designated VHS J0411-0907, is the brightest object in the J band of the near-IR spectral range among all known quasars lying at a red offset in excess of 6.7.
Bright quasars, or quasi-star radio objects, are extremely bright ancient galaxies, in the centers of which lie supermassive black holes. Quasars at high redshifts (over 6.0) are of great value to astronomers, since they function as the brightest beacons that most effectively track the chemical evolution of the Universe. However, such objects are extremely rare and very difficult to detect.
To date, scientists have been able to discover a little more than 100 quasars lying at a high redshift, mainly due to optical and infrared surveys of the sky with a wide field of view. This number is too small to obtain the required amount of information about the early stages of the evolution of the Universe.
In the new paper, a group of astronomers led by Estelle Pons from the University of Cambridge, UK, announces an important addition to the list of quasars located at high redshifts — the detection of the VHS J0411-0907 quasar at 6.82 red shift.
According to the study, the quasar VHS J0411-0907 has a bolometric luminosity of about 189*10^45 erg/s; the mass of its supermassive black hole is 613 million solar masses, and the Eddington ratio is about 2.37. The researchers note that these parameters make the VHS source J0411-0907 a quasar with the highest Eddington ratio and the least massive black hole among the quasars lying on a red shift of over 6.5.
VHS J0411-0907 has become the seventh quasar with a redshift of over 6.5, opened using the VISTA Hemisphere Survey (VHS) sky survey. The Pons team expects that further studies using this sky survey will lead to the discovery of dozens of new quasars lying at high redshifts.
New bright quasar on high redshift opened
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