Quasar J1601+3102: The Largest Radio Jet Ever Seen in the Early Universe
The optical image shown here comes from the DECam Legacy Survey (DECaLS), one of three public surveys that jointly imaged 14,000 square degrees of sky to provide targets for the ongoing Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Survey. DECals was conducted using the 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile, a Program of NSF NOIRLab.
This artist’s illustration shows the largest radio jet ever found in the early Universe.
A portion of this image was taken as part of the DECam Legacy Survey (DECaLS), one of three public surveys that jointly imaged 14,000 square degrees of sky to provide targets for the ongoing Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Survey. DECals was conducted using the 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile, a Program of NSF NOIRLab.
Making use of the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation (nsf) and operated by NSF NOIRLab, astronomers have characterized the largest-ever early-Universe radio jet. Historically, such large radio jets have remained elusive in the distant Universe. With these observations, astronomers have valuable new insights into when the first jets formed in the Universe and how they impacted the evolution of galaxies.
From decades of astronomical observations scientists know that most galaxies contain massive black holes at their centers. The gas and dust falling into these black holes liberates an enormous amount of energy as a result of friction, forming luminous galactic cores, called quasars, that expel jets of energetic matter. These jets can be detected with radio telescopes up to large distances. In our local Universe these radio jets are not uncommon, with a small fraction being found in nearby galaxies, but they have remained elusive in the distant, early Universe until now.
Using a combination of telescopes, astronomers have discovered a distant, two-lobed radio jet that spans an astonishing 200,000 light-years at least—twice the width of the Milky Way. This is the largest radio jet ever found this early in the history of the Universe. The jet was first identified using the international Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) Telescope, a network of radio telescopes throughout Europe.
Follow-up observations in the near-infrared with the Gemini Near-Infrared Spectrograph (GNIRS), and in the optical with the Hobby Eberly Telescope, were obtained to paint a complete picture of the radio jet and the quasar producing it. These findings are crucial to gaining more insight into the timing and mechanisms behind the formation of the first large-scale jets in our Universe.
GNIRS is mounted on the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and operated by NSF NOIRlab.
“We were searching for quasars with strong radio jets in the early Universe, which helps us understand how and when the first jets are formed and how they impact the evolution of galaxies,” says Anniek Gloudemans, postdoctoral research fellow at NOIRLab and lead author of the paper presenting these results in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Determining the properties of the quasar, such as its mass and the rate at which it is consuming matter, is necessary for understanding its formation history. To measure these parameters the team looked for a specific wavelength of light emitted by quasars known as the MgII (magnesium) broad emission line. Normally, this signal appears in the ultraviolet wavelength range. However, owing to the expansion of the Universe, which causes the light emitted by the quasar to be ‘stretched’ to longer wavelengths, the magnesium signal arrives at Earth in the near-infrared wavelength range, where it is detectable with GNIRS.
The quasar, named J1601+3102, formed when the Universe was less than 1.2 billion years old—just 9% of its current age. While quasars can have masses billions of times greater than that of our Sun, this one is on the small side, weighing in at 450 million times the mass of the Sun. The double-sided jets are asymmetrical both in brightness and the distance they stretch from the quasar, indicating an extreme environment may be affecting them.
“Interestingly, the quasar powering this massive radio jet does not have an extreme black hole mass compared to other quasars,” says Gloudemans. “This seems to indicate that you don’t necessarily need an exceptionally massive black hole or accretion rate to generate such powerful jets in the early Universe.”
The previous dearth of large radio jets in the early Universe has been attributed to noise from the cosmic microwave background—the ever-present fog of microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang. This persistent background radiation normally diminishes the radio light of such distant objects.
“It’s only because this object is so extreme that we can observe it from Earth, even though it’s really far away,” says Gloudemans. “This object shows what we can discover by combining the power of multiple telescopes that operate at different wavelengths.”
“When we started looking at this object we were expecting the southern jet to just be an unrelated nearby source, and for most of it to be small. That made it quite surprising when the LOFAR image revealed large, detailed radio structures,” says Frits Sweijen, postdoctoral research associate at Durham University and co-author of the paper. “The nature of this distant source makes it difficult to detect at higher radio frequencies, demonstrating the power of LOFAR on its own and its synergies with other instruments.”
Scientists still have a multitude of questions about how radio-bright quasars like J1601+3102 differ from other quasars. It remains unclear what circumstances are necessary to create such powerful radio jets, or when the first radio jets in the Universe formed. Thanks to the collaborative power of Gemini North, LOFAR and the Hobby Eberly Telescope, we are one step closer to understanding the enigmatic early Universe.
This research was presented in a paper titled “Monster radio jet (>66 kpc) observed in quasar at z ∼ 5” to appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ad9609
Image Credits: LOFAR / DECaLS / DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys / LBNL / DOE / CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / M. Garlick
Image Processing: M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)
Release Date: Feb. 6, 2025
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