Using the slitless grism on Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 to probe the distant universe, astronomers have found supermassive black holes growing in surprisingly small galaxies. The findings suggest that central black holes formed at an earlier stage in galaxy evolution. This study is part of the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) and will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.
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Even Low-Mass Galaxies Can Harbor Supermassive Black Holes
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Four Galaxies from HUDF WFC3/G141 Emission-Line Galaxies Sample
This is a montage of four small, young galaxies taken from a Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 slitless grism sample of 28 low-mass galaxies located 10 billion light-years away in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field region of the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic...
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Last Updated
Feb 17, 2025
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Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov