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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
earth and planetary sciences
The sudden death of the nearest quasar
Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 724, No. 1 PART 2, Year 2010
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Description
Galaxy formation is significantly modulated by energy output from supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies which grow in highly efficient luminous quasar phases. The timescale on which black holes transition into and out of such phases is, however, unknown. We present the first measurement of the shutdown timescale for an individual quasar using X-ray observations of the nearby galaxy IC 2497, which hosted a luminous quasar no more than 70,000 years ago that is still seen as a light echo in "Hanny's Voorwerp," but whose present-day radiative output is lower by at least two, and more likely by over four, orders of magnitude. This extremely rapid shutdown provides new insight into the physics of accretion in supermassive black holes and may signal a transition of the accretion disk to a radiatively inefficient state. © 2010. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Authors & Co-Authors
Schawinski, Kevin
United States, New Haven
Yale University
Evans, Daniel A.
United States, Cambridge
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
United States, Cambridge
Harvard-smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
United States, Elon
Elon University
Urry, Claudia Megan
United States, New Haven
Yale University
Keel, William C.
United States, Tuscaloosa
The University of Alabama
Natarajan, Priyamvada
United States, New Haven
Yale University
Lintott, Chris J.
United Kingdom, Oxford
University of Oxford
United States, Chicago
Adler Planetarium
Coppi, Paolo S.
United States, New Haven
Yale University
Kaviraj, Sugata
United Kingdom, Oxford
University of Oxford
United Kingdom, London
Imperial College London
Bamford, Steven P.
United Kingdom, Nottingham
University of Nottingham
Józsa, Gyula I.G.
Netherlands, Dwingeloo
Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy
Germany, Bonn
Universität Bonn
Garrett, Michael A.
Netherlands, Dwingeloo
Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy
Netherlands, Leiden
Universiteit Leiden
Australia, Hawthorn
Swinburne University of Technology
Fortson, Lucy F.
United States, Minneapolis
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Statistics
Citations: 68
Authors: 12
Affiliations: 15
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1088/2041-8205/724/1/L30
ISSN:
20418205