Galaxies Trapped in the Web of a Supermassive Black Hole – Cosmic “Spider’s Web” of Gas Extends Over 300 Times the Size of the Milky Way

Web of the Supermassive Black Hole

Artist’s impression of the web of the supermassive black hole. With the help of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have found six galaxies lying around a supermassive black hole, the first time such a close grouping has been seen within the first billion years of the Universe. This artist’s impression shows the central black hole and the galaxies trapped in its gas web. The black hole, which together with the disc around it is known as quasar SDSS J103027.09+052455.0, shines brightly as it engulfs matter around it. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

With the help of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have found six galaxies lying around a supermassive black hole when the Universe was less than a billion years old. This is the first time such a close grouping has been seen so soon after the Big Bang and the finding helps us better understand how supermassive black holes, one of which exists at the centre of our Milky Way, formed and grew to their enormous sizes so quickly. It supports the theory that black holes can grow rapidly within large, web-like structures which contain plenty of gas to fuel them.

“This research was mainly driven by the desire to understand some of the most challenging astronomical objects — supermassive black holes in the early Universe. These are extreme systems and to date we have had no good explanation for their existence,” said Marco Mignoli, an astronomer at the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Bologna, Italy, and lead author of the new research published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics.


With the help of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have found six galaxies lying around a supermassive black hole, the first time such a close grouping has been seen within the first billion years of the Universe. This artist’s impression shows the central black hole and the galaxies trapped in its gas web. The black hole, which together with the disc around it is known as quasar SDSS J103027.09+052455.0, shines brightly as it engulfs matter around it. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

The new observations with ESO’s VLT revealed several galaxies surrounding a supermassive black hole, all lying in a cosmic “spider’s web” of gas extending to over 300 times the size of the Milky Way. “The cosmic web filaments are like spider’s web threads,” explains Mignoli. “The galaxies stand and grow where the filaments cross, and streams of gas — available to fuel both the galaxies and the central supermassive black hole — can flow along the filaments.”

The light from this large web-like structure, with its black hole of one billion solar masses, has traveled to us from a time when the Universe was only 0.9 billion years old. “Our work has placed an important piece in the largely incomplete puzzle that is the formation and growth of such extreme, yet relatively abundant, objects so quickly after the Big Bang,” says co-author Roberto Gilli, also an astronomer at INAF in Bologna, referring to supermassive black holes.

Sky Around the Supermassive Black Hole's Web

Wide-field view of the sky around the supermassive black hole’s web. This image shows the sky around SDSS J103027.09+052455.0, a quasar powered by a supermassive black hole surrounded by at least six galaxies. This picture was created from images in the Digitized Sky Survey 2. Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin

The very first black holes, thought to have formed from the collapse of the first stars, must have grown very fast to reach masses of a billion suns within the first 0.9 billion years of the Universe’s life. But astronomers have struggled to explain how sufficiently large amounts of “black hole fuel” could have been available to enable these objects to grow to such enormous sizes in such a short time. The new-found structure offers a likely explanation: the “spider’s web” and the galaxies within it contain enough gas to provide the fuel that the central black hole needs to quickly become a supermassive giant.

But how did such large web-like structures form in the first place? Astronomers think giant halos of mysterious dark matter are key. These large regions of invisible matter are thought to attract huge amounts of gas in the early Universe; together, the gas and the invisible dark matter form the web-like structures where galaxies and black holes can evolve.

“Our finding lends support to the idea that the most distant and massive black holes form and grow within massive dark matter halos in large-scale structures, and that the absence of earlier detections of such structures was likely due to observational limitations,” says Colin Norman of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US, also a co-author on the study.


This video sequence zooms in on the web of the supermassive black hole found in the early Universe with six galaxies within it. Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)

The galaxies now detected are some of the faintest that current telescopes can observe. This discovery required observations over several hours using the largest optical telescopes available, including ESO’s VLT. Using the MUSE and FORS2 instruments on the VLT at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert, the team confirmed the link between four of the six galaxies and the black hole. “We believe we have just seen the tip of the iceberg, and that the few galaxies discovered so far around this supermassive black hole are only the brightest ones,” said co-author Barbara Balmaverde, an astronomer at INAF in Torino, Italy.

These results contribute to our understanding of how supermassive black holes and large cosmic structures formed and evolved. ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, currently under construction in Chile, will be able to build on this research by observing many more fainter galaxies around massive black holes in the early Universe using its powerful instruments.

Sky Chart Supermassive Black Hole's Web Sextans Constellation

This chart shows the location of SDSS J103027.09+052455.0, a quasar powered by a supermassive black hole surrounded by at least six galaxies, in the constellation of Sextans. The map includes most of the stars visible to the unaided eye under good conditions, and the location of the structure is indicated by a red circle. Credit: ESO, IAU and Sky & Telescope

Reference: “Web of the giant: Spectroscopic confirmation of a large-scale structure around the z = 6.31 quasar SDSS J1030+0524” by Marco Mignoli, Roberto Gilli, Roberto Decarli, Eros Vanzella, Barbara Balmaverde, Nico Cappelluti, Letizia P. Cassarà, Andrea Comastri, Felice Cusano, Kazushi Iwasawa, Stefano Marchesi, Isabella Prandoni, Cristian Vignali, Fabio Vito, Giovanni Zamorani, Marco Chiaberge and Colin Norman, 1 October 2020, Astronomy & Astrophysics.
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202039045

The team is composed of M. Mignoli (INAF, Bologna, Italy), R. Gilli (INAF, Bologna, Italy), R. Decarli (INAF, Bologna, Italy), E. Vanzella (INAF, Bologna, Italy), B. Balmaverde (INAF, Pino Torinese, Italy), N. Cappelluti (Department of Physics, University of Miami, Florida, USA), L. Cassarà (INAF, Milano, Italy), A. Comastri (INAF, Bologna, Italy), F. Cusano (INAF, Bologna, Italy), K. Iwasawa (ICCUB, Universitat de Barcelona & ICREA, Barcelona, Spain), S. Marchesi (INAF, Bologna, Italy), I. Prandoni (INAF, Istituto di Radioastronomia, Bologna, Italy), C. Vignali (Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy & INAF, Bologna, Italy), F. Vito (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy), G. Zamorani (INAF, Bologna, Italy), M. Chiaberge (Space Telescope Science Institute, Maryland, USA), C. Norman (Space Telescope Science Institute & Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, USA).

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organization in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It has 16 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO carries out an ambitious program focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organizing cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal, and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its world-leading Very Large Telescope Interferometer as well as two survey telescopes, VISTA working in the infrared and the visible-light VLT Survey Telescope. Also at Paranal ESO will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. ESO is also a major partner in two facilities on Chajnantor, APEX and ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-meter Extremely Large Telescope, the ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky.”

4 Comments on "Galaxies Trapped in the Web of a Supermassive Black Hole – Cosmic “Spider’s Web” of Gas Extends Over 300 Times the Size of the Milky Way"

  1. It never ceases to amaze me how these so-called astronomers will contort themselves into all kinds of intellectually confused positions while ignoring already well-understood mechanisms of star formation with fanciful suppositions, purely to explain away the blatant discrepancies in the Big Bang model.

    • Christina Wall | October 1, 2020 at 9:24 am | Reply

      Yes indeed. Mainstream cosmology “experts” must really love their gymnastics. They practice their back bends and flips on the daily. Must take a lot of work to take every sliver of opportunity to put on a big show of jumping though hoops and performing circus magic for the ooh’s and ahh’s of people who leave the thinking to others and fail to see the makeup on the faces of the bumbling clowns they blindly place their trust in.
      This is such an obvious example of massive amounts of electric Birkeland currents and the z pinch effects that occurred in the distant past. But oh no, that would mean all these experts would have to admit that they had most of their life’s work wrong. th

      They choose to stick with outdated mathematical theory based science instead of actually thinking openly and branching outside of their narrowly focused field of science. t
      To work with professionals in others areas of the scientific spectrum. As long as archaic beliefs of specialized branching science education continues to funnel everyone into boxes and push division of the sciences, humans will never reach full potential when it comes to truly understanding our universe. Only through unity and open, unbiased communication and education can we go much farther beyond our current position as a species.
      As it stands now, we are headed for an immanent barrier of advancement if we can’t change the current course we are on.
      And now I am more depressed.

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