Recently, the darkest sky of peninsular Italy, precisely in Manciano in the province of Grosseto, witnessed an unprecedented astronomical event. Thanks to the telescopes of the Virtual Telescope Project, astronomers were able to observe and immortalize the almost farther away than ever observed to the wavelengths of visible light.
A quasar, for those who don't know, is an active galactic nucleus formed by a supermassive black hole growing. The quasar in question, known by the acronym SDSS J114816.64+525150.3, is distant from us 12.9 billion light years. This means its light has been traveling to Earth for nearly 13 billion years, giving us a glimpse of the universe when it was less than 900 million years old.
The quasar and the sky of Manciano: a perfect combination
The discovery was made possible thanks to extraordinary quality of the night sky of Manciano, free of light pollution, which allowed the instruments to achieve precision never seen before for a 350 mm aperture telescope. Gianluca Masi, astrophysicist and scientific director of the Virtual Telescope Project, underlines a interesting phenomenon cosmological linked to discovery: the redshift.
This effect causes the electromagnetic radiation to shift towards red, more marked the further away the observed object is. Almost all the light from this quasar is shifted into the infrared, and only a small part remains in the visible.
This discovery not only expands our understanding of the early universe, but also challenges our technological ability to observe and understand cosmic phenomena at such great distances. And to think that all this happened under the sky of a little girl Italian location!
#Discover #farthest #quasar #observed #Italy
