The newly-discovered radio jet spans an astonishing 215,000 light-years, and is associated with J1601+3102, an extremely radio-loud quasar that existed just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. This structure, observed by the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), the Gemini Near-Infrared Spectrograph (GNIRS) on the Gemini North telescope, and the Hobby Eberly Telescope, is the largest radio jet ever found this early in the history of the Universe.
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The J1601+3102 radio jet. Image credit: LOFAR / DECaLS / DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys / LBNL / DOE / CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / F. Sweijen, Durham University / M. Zamani, NSF NOIRLab.
“We were searching for quasars with strong radio jets in the early Universe, which helps us understand how and when the first jets are formed and how they impact the evolution of galaxies,” said Dr. Anniek Gloudemans, an astronomer at NSF’s NOIRLab.
“Determining the properties of the quasar, such as its mass and the rate at which it is consuming matter, is necessary for understanding its formation history.”
To measure these parameters, the astronomers looked for a specific wavelength of light emitted by quasars known as the MgII (magnesium) broad emission line.
Normally, this signal appears in the ultraviolet wavelength range. However, owing to the expansion of the Universe, which causes the light emitted by the quasar to be ‘stretched’ to longer wavelengths, the magnesium signal arrives at Earth in the near-infrared wavelength range, where it is detectable with GNIRS.
The J1601+3102 quasar formed when the Universe was less than 1.2 billion years old — just 9% of its current age.
While quasars can have masses billions of times greater than that of our Sun, this one is on the small side, weighing in at 450 million times the mass of the Sun.
The double-sided jets are asymmetrical both in brightness and the distance they stretch from the quasar, indicating an extreme environment may be affecting them.
“Interestingly, the quasar powering this massive radio jet does not have an extreme black hole mass compared to other quasars,” Dr. Gloudemans said.
“This seems to indicate that you don’t necessarily need an exceptionally massive black hole or accretion rate to generate such powerful jets in the early Universe.”
The previous dearth of large radio jets in the early Universe has been attributed to noise from the cosmic microwave background — the ever-present fog of microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang.
This persistent background radiation normally diminishes the radio light of such distant objects.
“It’s only because this object is so extreme that we can observe it from Earth, even though it’s really far away,” Dr. Gloudemans said.
“This object shows what we can discover by combining the power of multiple telescopes that operate at different wavelengths.”
The results appear in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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Anniek J. Gloudemans et al. 2025. Monster Radio Jet (>66 kpc) Observed in Quasar at z ~ 5. ApJL 980, L8; doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ad9609
This article is based on a press-release provided by NSF’s NOIRLab.
