Scientists were able to find a galaxy in which star formation had stopped. The space telescope helped with this
What is known
GS-9209 is the most ancient of allknown extinct galaxies. Almost all of its stars appeared between 600 million and 800 million years after the Big Bang. But then the formation of stars suddenly stopped.
For 200 million GS-9209 was able to gain a mass of 40 billionSuns, which corresponds to the mass of the Milky Way. Scientists believe that the abrupt cessation of star formation may be due to the behavior of a supermassive black hole, which is located at the center of the discovered galaxy.
According to astronomers from the Royal Observatoryin Edinburgh, a black hole in the process of absorbing matter turned into a quasar, the radiation of which is 1 trillion times greater than the radiation of stars. This is enough for the gas needed to form stars to stop compressing.
Researchers now plan to explore the galaxyGS-9209 in more detail. The Extremely Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory will help them with this. But the observatory is under construction.