A blazar in the early universe

The super-sharp radio vision of the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) has revealed previously unseen details in a beam of material about 12.8 billion light years from Earth at three-quarters of the speed of light from the core of a galaxy. The galaxy, called PSO J0309 + 27, is a blazar, with its beam pointed towards Earth, and is the brightest radio-emitting blazar seen at such a distance to date. It is also the second brightest X-ray blazar at such a distance.

In this image, the brightest radio emission comes from the center of the galaxy, lower right. The jet is propelled by the gravitational energy of a supermassive black hole in the core and moves outward to the upper left. The jet seen here extends for about 1,600 light-years and shows structure within it.

At this distance, PSO J0309 + 27 is seen as it was when the Universe was less than a billion years old, or just over 7 percent of its current age.

An international team of astronomers led by Cristiana Spingola of the University of Bologna in Italy observed the galaxy in April and May 2020. Their analysis of the object’s properties provides support for some theoretical models of why blazes are rare in the early universe. The researchers reported their results in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.