James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Detection of an X-ray quasar in a gravitationally-lensed z=10.3 galaxy suggests that early supermassive black holes originate from heavy seeds

JWST and Chandra images of UHZ1: Panel (a) The JWST NIRCam image of the surroundings of UHZ1, and a zoom-in NIRCam image of UHZ1 in Panels (b and c). Panel (d) JWST images of UHZ1 in seven filters. The galaxy is detected in all JWST bands except for F115W. The non-detection in the bluest F115W band clearly indicates the dropout nature of the galaxy and suggests that it is located at z ˜ 10. The source is extended, with a potentially disturbed morphology evocative of late-stage mergers at lower redshift. A bright nuclear region is apparent in the F150W and F200W bands, and the contrast of this nucleus against the galaxy outskirts decreases for the redder bands. (e) A JWST /Chandra overlay showing a 4.2s excess of X-ray counts cospatial with UHZ1. (f) The same Chandra 2-7 keV Chandra image, this time with UHZ1 represented as black contours. The size of the X-ray source is consistent with a point source. The location, luminosity, and spectral characteristics of the source suggest that it is a heavily obscured quasar residing in the z = 10.3 galaxy, UHZ1. North is up and East is left.