Submitted by S. Brereton on Wed, 03/09/2025 - 15:33
Roberto Maiolino and Francesco D'Eugenio have been awarded Director's Discretionary Time on JWST. DDT programmes are awarded only to exceptional discoveries, in this case to observe a bright, mysterious source seen two billion years after the Big Bang. This object, dubbed "The Cliff", represents the most extreme case of a new type of accreting black holes, characterized by extremely dense gas envelopes, almost resembling a star. In addition to this dense gas, The Cliff seems remarkably pristine in its chemical contents. Together with its large black hole mass, the lack of heavy elements such as oxygen cannot be explained by current theoretical models (Maiolino et al. 2025) -- for instance models by Debora Sijacki and the Theory Group at the Kavli.
These observations aim to establish if The Cliff is truly metal poor and, possibly, the mass of the central black hole and the nature of the dense gas envelope. Observations have been scheduled for December 2025.
Xihan Ji, Roberto Maiolino and Francesco D'Eugenio have also been awarded two additional DDT programmes, on the Spanish 10-m Gran Telescopio Canarias, and on the ESO 8-m Very Large Telescope. These observations target a source known as "Lord of LRDs". Little Red Dots (LRDs) are a new type of accreting supermassive black hole discovered by JWST. Before this source, LRDs were thought to be all at cosmological distances, and to represent the earliest phases of black hole growth. Instead, Lord of LRDs is found at a "mere" 1.5 billion light years from us, which is extraordinarily far, yet pales in comparison to the JWST counterparts.
The GTC observations aim to study the unique emission-line and continuum light of this extraordinary source, with data quality that cannot be attained by JWST. The VLT observations, scheduled for January 2025, will use spectropolarimetry to investigate the inner engine powering these enigmatic sources.
Together, these programmes will help understanding how supermassive black holes form and grow across cosmic times.
Image: Artist’s illustration of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. James Vaughan/Science Photo Library/Alamy Stock Photo
