SDSS J143029.88+133912.0, nicknamed the ‘Teacup’ because of its shape, is a quasar located about 1.1 billion light-years away. The power source of the quasar is a supermassive black hole at the center of its host galaxy. The huge black hole has been powering eruptions of energy and particles that astronomers can trace back for thousands of years. One large eruption formed the Teacup’s handle, which lies 30,000 light-years away from the black hole. New data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton mission provide detailed information about the history of these eruptions.
The ‘Teacup’ quasar is causing an ongoing storm. The ‘handle’ is a ring of X-ray (blue) and optical (red and green) light surrounding a giant bubble, shown in the Chandra and Hubble data. This handle-shaped feature, which is located about 30,000 light-years from the galaxy’s central supermassive black hole, was likely formed by one or more eruptions powered by the black hole. Image credit: X-ray — NASA / CXC / University of Cambridge / G. Lansbury et al; optical – NASA / STScI / W. Keel et al; radio – NRAO / VLA.
SDSS J143029.88+133912.0 was originally discovered in visible light images by citizen astronomers in 2007 as part of the Galaxy Zoo project, using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Subsequent optical telescope observations showed that atoms in the handle of the Teacup were ionized, that is, these particles became charged when some of their electrons were stripped off, presumably by the quasar’s strong radiation in the past.
The observations suggested that the quasar’s radiation production had diminished by a factor of somewhere between 50 and 600 over the last 40,000 to 100,000 years.
This inferred sharp decline led astronomers to conclude that the quasar was fading.
“New data from Chandra and XMM-Newton are giving us an improved understanding of the history of this galactic storm,” explained Dr. George Lansbury from the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy and colleagues.
“The X-ray spectra show that the quasar is heavily obscured by gas. This implies that the quasar is producing much more ionizing radiation than indicated by the estimates based on the optical data alone.”
According to the team, the quasar has dimmed by only a factor of 25 or less over the past 100,000 years.
“The Chandra data also show evidence for hotter gas within the bubble, which may imply that a wind of material is blowing away from the black hole,” the scientists said.
“Such a wind, which was driven by radiation from the quasar, may have created the bubbles found in the Teacup.”
Astronomers have previously observed bubbles of various sizes in elliptical galaxies, galaxy groups and galaxy clusters that were generated by narrow jets containing particles traveling near the speed of light, that shoot away from the supermassive black holes. The energy of the jets dominates the power output of these black holes, rather than radiation.
In these jet-driven systems, they have found that the power required to generate the bubbles is proportional to their X-ray brightness.
“Surprisingly, the radiation-driven Teacup quasar follows this pattern,” Dr. Lansbury and co-authors said.
“This suggests radiation-dominated quasar systems and their jet-dominated cousins can have similar effects on their galactic surroundings.”
The study was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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George B. Lansbury et al. 2018. Storm in a Teacup: X-Ray View of an Obscured Quasar and Superbubble. ApJL 856, L1; doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/aab357
