The combined power of NASA's Great Observatories - the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope - have been combined to find a hidden population of supermassive black holes in the universe. It took the penetrating view of Spitzer to finally uncover the black holes and their surrounding galaxies.
All these space telescopes peered across 13 billion light-years of space into a small region of dark sky (called the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey field, or the GOODS field for short) that contains many thousands of galaxies.
Comparing visible light and X-ray views of this region, astronomers pinpointed X-ray sources that are supermassive black holes in young galaxies which largely existed when the universe was half its present age. But the telltale X-ray glow from other sources didn't have any obvious host galaxies until Spitzer uncovered them. In this view the X-ray data is colored blue and the Spitzer images are colored red.
[Top and Bottom Left] - A Hubble Space Telescope deep view of two small portions of the GOODS field uncovers some of the faintest galaxies ever seen. But at the center of each image is the X-ray glow from heated material falling into a million- or billion-solar mass black hole - as seen by Chandra - which does not have any visible-light counterpart in either field.
[Top and Bottom Right] - The Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared view of the same two regions of the GOODS field uncovers the glow of a powerful active galactic nucleus in both views. The nucleus is either shrouded in dust, or is at such a great distance that all of its light has been stretched into infrared wavelengths by the universe's expansion.
Credits
NASA, ESA, A. M. Koekemoer (STScI), M. Dickinson (NOAO) and The GOODS Team| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | GOODS, Chandra Deep Field - South |
| Object Description | Deep Survey field |
| R.A. Position | 03h 32m 30.0s |
| Dec. Position | -27° 48' 20.0" |
| Constellation | Fornax |
| About The Data | |
| Instrument | HST>ACS/WFC and CXO>ACIS (left), and SST>IRAC (right) |
| Exposure Dates | July 2002 - Feb 2003 (ACS/WFC); October - November 1999; and May -June, and December 2000 (ACIS); February 2004 (IRAC) |
| Filters | ACS/WFC: F435W (B), F606W (V), F775W (i), and F850LP (z) ACIS: 0.5-2keV, 2-4keV, and 4-8keV IRAC: 3.6 microns, 4.5microns , 5.8 microns, and 8 microns |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
