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Observational cosmology

Through a glass brightly

Nature volume 393, pages 520–521 (1998)Cite this article

The record for the most distant object in the Universe is broken regularly, but the record for the object with the largest apparent luminosity has been much more durable, resting1 with IRASF10214+4724 since 1991. But a new champion has emerged — as described by Irwin et al.2 in a forthcoming paper, APM08279+5255 appears to be ten times more luminous.

F10214 was identified during a survey to measure the redshifts of galaxies detected using the IRAS satellite. IRAS was sensitive to the far-infrared thermal emission from grains of interstellar dust in the Milky Way and other galaxies. The dust is heated to between 20 and 100 K by the visible and ultraviolet light emitted by stars or active galactic nuclei (AGN), and re-radiates this energy in the far-infrared waveband. So the presence of dust decreases the visible and ultraviolet luminosity of a galaxy or AGN, and increases its infrared luminosity.

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Figure 1: The Cloverleaf.

IRAM

References

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  1. the Cavendish Laboratory, Madingley Road, CB3 0HE, Cambridge, UK

    Andrew Blain

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Blain, A. Through a glass brightly. Nature 393, 520–521 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/31107

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