Photo: NASA
Astronomers have discovered the most distant black hole ever detected in X-rays, using NASA telescopes, the agency said on Monday (6 November).
The black hole is at an early stage of growth that had never been witnessed before, where its mass is similar to that of its host galaxy.
By combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, a team of researchers was able to find the telltale signature of a growing black hole just 470 million years after the big bang.
This result may explain how some of the first supermassive black holes in the universe formed, said NASA.
The team found the black hole in a galaxy named UHZ1 in the direction of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744, located 3.5 billion light-years from Earth.
Webb data, however, has revealed the galaxy is much more distant than the cluster, at 13.2 billion light-years from Earth, when the universe was only 3 percent of its current age, according to NASA.
Messenger/Nargis
