NASA's WISE Survey discover Millions of Black Holes

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission has escort to a newfound bonanza of supermassive black holes and galaxies called extreme hot dogs, or dust-obscured galaxies. From the telescope have millions of dusty Revealed black hole candidates crosswise the universe and even dustier About 1.000 objects thought to be among the brightest galaxies ever found. These powerful galaxies, which burn brightly with infrared light, are nicknamed Hot Dogs.

"WISE has exposed a menagerie of hidden objects," said Hashima Hasan, WISE program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We've found an asteroid dancing ahead of Earth in its orbit, the coldest star-like orbs Known and now, supermassive black holes and galaxies hiding behind cloaks of dust."

WISE scanned the whole sky twice in infrared light, completing its survey in early 2011. Like night-vision goggles probing the dark, the telescope captured millions of images of the sky. All the data from the mission Have Been released publicly, Allowing astronomers to dig in and make new discoveries.

The latest Findings are helping astronomers better understand how galaxies and black holes at the behemoth grow and evolve their centers together. For example, the giant black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, called Sagittarius A *, has 4 million times the mass of our sun and has gone through periodic feeding frenzies where materials falls towards the black hole, heats up and irradiates its surroundings. Central Bigger black holes, up to a billion times the mass of our sun, may even shut down star formation in galaxies.

In one study, astronomers used WISE TO IDENTIFY About 2.5 million supermassive black holes actively feeding across the full sky, stretching back to more than 10 billion distances light-years away. About two-Thirds of These objects had never been detected before because their blocks visible light dust. These monsters WISE sees Easily Because Their powerful, accreting black holes warm the dust, causing it to glow in infrared light.

"We've got the black holes cornered," said Daniel Stern of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., Lead author of the study and black hole WISE project scientist for NASA black-hole another mission, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array ( NuSTAR). "WISE is finding them across the full sky, while giving us a NuSTAR is Entirely New Look at Their high-energy X-ray light and learning what makes them tick."

In two other papers WISE, Researchers report finding what are among the brightest galaxies KNOWN, one of the main goals of the mission. So far, they have Identified About 1.000 candidates.

These extreme objects can pour out more than 100 trillion times as much light as our sun. They are so dusty, however, that they Appear only in the longest wavelengths of infrared light captured by WISE. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope Followed up on the discoveries in more detail and show Helped That, in Addition to hosting supermassive black holes feverishly snacking on gas and dust, These dogs are busy churning out new stars.

"These dusty, cataclysmically forming galaxies are so rare WISE had to scan the sky to find them Entire," said Peter Eisenhardt, lead author of the paper on the first of these bright, dusty galaxies, and project scientist for WISE at JPL. "We are also seeing evidence that These record setters May have Formed Their black holes before the bulk of Their stars. The 'eggs' May have eaten before the 'chickens.'"

More than 100 of these objects, located About 10 billion light-years away, have been confirmed using the WM Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, as well as the Gemini Observatory in Chile, Palomar's 200-inch Hale telescope near San Diego, and the Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatory near Tucson, Ariz.

The WISE observations, combined with Data at longer infrared wavelengths even from Caltech's Submillimeter Observatory atop Mauna Kea, Revealed That These extreme galaxies are more than twice as hot as other infrared-bright galaxies. One theory is being heated Their dust is an extremely powerful by burst of activity from the supermassive black hole.

"We may be seeing a new, rare phase in the evolution of galaxies," said Jingwen Wu of JPL, lead author of the study on the submillimeter observations. All three papers are being published in the Astrophysical Journal.