Announcement

ESOcast 32: Most Distant Quasar Found

The astronomy podcast featuring news and cutting edge science from ESO

29 June 2011

Quasars are extraordinarily bright distant galaxies that are thought to be powered by vast black holes at their centres. Now, a team of European astronomers has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope, and a host of other telescopes, to find the most distant of these brilliant beacons ever recorded — it is so far away that it took 12.9 billion years for its light to reach us.

In this ESOcast, Dr J explains how astronomers spent five years painstakingly searching for this object, and how its properties can help us understand the early Universe.

Check out more episodes of the ESOcast here.

Credit

ESO

Visual design and editing: Martin Kornmesser and Luis Calçada
Editing: Herbert Zodet
Web and technical support: Lars Holm Nielsen and Raquel Yumi Shida
Written by: Sarah Roberts and Richard Hook
Narration: Dr. J
Music: Movetwo and John Dyson (from the album Darklight)
Footage and photos: ESO, A. M. Swinbank and S. Zieleniewski, Stéphane Guisard (www.eso.org/~sguisard) and José Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org)
Directed by: Herbert Zodet and Richard Hook
Executive producer: Lars Lindberg Christensen

Links

• Watch and download the ESOcast 32 (various formats available)