Binary quasars photographed

It's not mentioned in this press release how far away these quasars are.
But it is quite interesting how we're able to resolve in enough detail
nowadays to distinguish between two nuclei in merging galaxies at great
distances.

Yousuf Khan

***
Merging galaxies create a binary quasar
"Most, if not all, large galaxies, such as our galaxy the Milky Way,
host super-massive black holes at their centers. Because galaxies
regularly interact and merge, astronomers have assumed that binary
super-massive black holes have been common in the Universe, especially
during its early history. Black holes can only be detected as quasars
when they are actively accreting matter, a process that releases vast
amounts of energy. A leading theory is that galaxy mergers trigger
accretion, creating quasars in both galaxies. Because most of such
mergers would have happened in the distant past, binary quasars and
their associated galaxies are very far away and therefore difficult for
most telescopes to resolve."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0203131413.htm

Androcles wrote:
"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
...
It's not mentioned in this press release how far away these quasars are.

Nobody knows how far away any quasar is.
All stellar distances are based on the stupid assumption that the speed of
light is constant with respect to nothing.

I don't disagree that that assumption might be naive, but given current
assumptions you'd think they would take a stab at guessing its distance.

Yousuf Khan

"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
...
Androcles wrote:
"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
...
It's not mentioned in this press release how far away these quasars are.

Nobody knows how far away any quasar is.
All stellar distances are based on the stupid assumption that the speed
of light is constant with respect to nothing.

I don't disagree that that assumption might be naive, but given current
assumptions you'd think they would take a stab at guessing its distance.

Yousuf Khan

So you would encourage and advise that assumptions and guesses are
science, when those assumptions are so very obviously false?
beta-Perseus plays peek-a-boo with a dark companion,
delta-Cepheus puffs and down like a blow fish,
V 1493 Aql blows itself to smithereens twice in three months,
Mira has a tail,
Mars has canals and moves in epicycles, and
pencils bend when you put them in water.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...ic/brokpen.jpg
Saying a quasar is 13 billion light years away must be small potatoes
compared to that, even if it's only a million LY.

It's not mentioned in this press release how Superman gets his ability
to stand on clouds.
http://theconversational.files.wordp...9/superman.jpg

In article ,
Yousuf Khan writes:
It's not mentioned in this press release how far away these quasars
are.

So take a look at the abstract of the published paper:
Green et al. 2010 ApJ 710, 1578.

We present the first luminous, spatially resolved binary quasar that
clearly inhabits an ongoing galaxy merger. SDSS J125455.09+084653.9
and SDSS J125454.87+084652.1 (SDSS J1254+0846 hereafter) are two
luminous z = 0.44 radio-quiet quasars, with a radial velocity
difference of just 215 km/s, separated on the sky by 21 kpc in a
disturbed host galaxy merger showing obvious tidal tails. The pair
was targeted as part of a complete sample of binary quasar candidates
with small transverse separations drawn from SDSS DR6 photometry. We
present follow-up optical imaging which shows broad, symmetrical
tidal arm features spanning some 75 kpc at the quasars'
redshift. Previously, the triggering of two quasars during a merger
had only been hypothesized but our observations provide strong
evidence of such an event. SDSS J1254+0846, as a face-on,
pre-coalescence merger hosting two luminous quasars separated by a
few dozen kpc, provides a unique opportunity to probe quasar activity
in an ongoing gas-rich merger. Numerical modeling suggests that the
system consists of two massive disk galaxies prograde to their mutual
orbit, caught during the first passage of an active merger. This
demonstrates rapid black hole growth during the early stages of a
merger between galaxies with pre-existing bulges. Neither of the two
luminous nuclei show significant intrinsic absorption by gas or dust
in our optical or X-ray observations, illustrating that not all
merging quasars will be in an obscured, ultraluminous phase. We find
that the Eddington ratio for the fainter component B is rather
normal, while for the A component L/L_Edd is quite (3 sigma) high
compared to quasars of similar luminosity and redshift, possibly
evidence for strong merger-triggered accretion. More such mergers
should be identifiable at higher redshifts using binary quasars as
tracers.

Steve Willner wrote:
In article ,
Yousuf Khan writes:
It's not mentioned in this press release how far away these quasars
are.

So take a look at the abstract of the published paper:
Green et al. 2010 ApJ 710, 1578.

We present the first luminous, spatially resolved binary quasar that
clearly inhabits an ongoing galaxy merger. SDSS J125455.09+084653.9
and SDSS J125454.87+084652.1 (SDSS J1254+0846 hereafter) are two
luminous z = 0.44 radio-quiet quasars, with a radial velocity


Ah okay, z=0.44 is equal to 4.57 billion years ago. That coincides
almost exactly with when the Sun and Solar system first formed.

Yousuf Khan

On Feb 3, 8:32*pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:
It's not mentioned in this press release how far away these quasars are.
But it is quite interesting how we're able to resolve in enough detail
nowadays to distinguish between two nuclei in merging galaxies at great
distances.

* * * * Yousuf Khan

***
Merging galaxies create a binary quasar
"Most, if not all, large galaxies, such as our galaxy the Milky Way,
host super-massive black holes at their centers. Because galaxies
regularly interact and merge, astronomers have assumed that binary
super-massive black holes have been common in the Universe, especially
during its early history. Black holes can only be detected as quasars
when they are actively accreting matter, a process that releases vast
amounts of energy. A leading theory is that galaxy mergers trigger
accretion, creating quasars in both galaxies. Because most of such
mergers would have happened in the distant past, binary quasars and
their associated galaxies are very far away and therefore difficult for
most telescopes to resolve."http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100203131413.htm

The Chandra/SDSS site at Harvard (http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/
2010/sdss/) says that they're 4.6 billion light years away
corresponding to a redshift of z=0.44. The ratio 70 thousand l.y. /
4.6 billion light years gives a separation of 3.14 seconds of arc. At
5000 Angstroms, a 6.5 meter telescope can resolve 16.2 milli-arc-
seconds.

It surprises the hell out of me that something that far away could
have such a large angular separation, but I've done the calculation
six times, and the answer never changes. I thought for sure that the
separation would be in milli-arc-seconds, and that a gargantuan
telescope of 6.5 meters would have a resolution better than 16.2 milli-
arc-seconds, but the numbers agree, and the checks agree, too. Go
figure. :P

On Feb 7, 11:04*am, "F/32 Eurydice" wrote:
The Chandra/SDSS site at Harvard (http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/
2010/sdss/) says that they're 4.6 billion light years away
corresponding to a redshift of z=0.44. *The ratio 70 thousand *l.y. /
4.6 billion light years gives a separation of 3.14 seconds of arc. *At
5000 Angstroms, a 6.5 meter telescope can resolve 16.2 milli-arc-
seconds.

It surprises the hell out of me that something that far away could
have such a large angular separation, but I've done the calculation
six times, and the answer never changes. *I thought for sure that the
separation would be in milli-arc-seconds, and that a gargantuan
telescope of 6.5 meters would have a resolution better than 16.2 milli-
arc-seconds, but the numbers agree, and the checks agree, too. *Go
figure. *:P

The images might be infrared, so that might explain why we don't get
better resolution. Also, they did say that the galaxies are just
undergoing their first pass at each other prior to merger. They've
probably already shot past each other once, and so they are on their
furthest swing away from each other at the moment.

Yousuf Khan