Astronomers have discovered the farthest black hole ever observed with X-rays, using NASA telescopes, the observatory said, Monday.
The black hole is in an early stage of growth that has never been seen before, as its mass is similar to the mass of the host galaxy.
By combining data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of researchers was able to find the signature of a growing black hole just 470 million years after the Big Bang.
NASA indicated that this result may explain how some of the first massive black holes in the universe formed.
The team found the black hole in a galaxy called UHZ1 in the direction of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744, which is located 3.5 billion light-years from Earth.
However, data from the James Webb Telescope revealed that the galaxy is much farther away from the cluster, as it is located 13.2 billion light-years from Earth, when the universe was only 3 percent of its current age, according to NASA.