The FASTEST growing supermassive black hole EVER found | Night Sky News March 2024

00:00 Intro
01:04 Mercury @ Greatest Eastern Elongation with Jupiter (24th March)
02:29 Saturn returns with Mars + Toenail Moon! (6th Apr)
03:32 TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE! (North America, 8th April)
06:08 Penumbral Lunar Eclipse (24th March)
06:39 Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks update!
08:41 Ground News
10:27 NASA Space Telescope Live
11:25 Odysseus IM-1 Moon landing
14:31 NSF given ultimatum to choose either TMT or GMT
20:51 NASA must cut budget to Chandra X-Ray Observatory
21:54 Fastest growing SMBH ever found!
30:09 Conclusion
31:21 Bloopers

Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV

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👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.

[JPF]

I'm here for the science but the way Dr Becky radiates joy and happiness can't be ignored.

[davidcerutti]

By my back of the envelope calculation, that quasar is 400 trillion times brighter than the sun. It's emitting in about 14 minutes the energy that the sun will release in its lifetime.

[wm-dopple]

Re: the colander trick: also good to know is that, if you find a tree with leaves spaced out enough that it results in a sun-dappled patch of shade on the ground, it can also end up focusing the same sort of images of the eclipse on the ground. Last time I was present for an eclipse, after totality we looked down and suddenly realized that there were crescent-shaped patches of light _everywhere around us_.

[Dan-Simms]

I mentioned the solar eclipse to a friend and their kid the other day and they thought it was going to be dark for half a week and get super cold! Said they learned it from twitter and tiktok...smh and we are not even in the area of totality. So i explained how it all worked. Missinfo man, sad.

[hugegamer]

I had no idea comets were like cats, but this makes sense. You get the idea you’re only around because they let you.

[tpottrell]

I'm taking my 11 y/o daughter from the UK to see the eclipse in Bloomington - our first total eclipse. Can't wait😎

[seadog]

17 billion solar mass black hole that existed just 2 billion years after the Big Bang… how does that fit with measurements of other supermassive black holes of a similar age?

Great episode, many thanks!

[ryanfranz]

Thank you for the Odysseus lander shout out! I worked on that mission. Really cool to hear about something I worked on through one of my regular, trusted, sources. Plus you didn’t shame us for tipping over 😂, as always you’re focused on the science and bigger picture.

[theoriginalstoney]

Hi Becky, I’ve a video request, as I have a question on black holes (your favourite topic):
White Dwarves are held up by electron degeneracy pressure. Add more mass and a neutron star is held up by neutron degeneracy pressure. (I’m “mass”-ively simplifying to fit this into a comment…) Beyond that - it’s just a black hole with a singularity. Why are we sure it’s not a “something else” degeneracy pressure preventing the singularity e.g. quark matter and instead always state it’s a singularity? It’s ultimately unknowable, I guess, as it’s the wrong side of the event horizon, but I’m curious why there’s confidence in the singularity and why we rule out something else. I assume it’s the maths - but could you do an explainer on that? Would make a very interesting video.

[RobertRodneyUplinger]

Correction: (With Mercury's 'this time) 'Greatest Elongation forms a Right-Angle at Mercury, rather than at the Sun.

[jacksonstarky]

"Congress is the opposite of progress." - NSF

[michaellong]

I went up Mauna Kea in January on a 10 person tour. At the turn-off road, we passed a site where there had been protests and some road blocking, but there was exactly 1 tent and maybe 1 sort of lean-to still there with no one in sight. A problem we were told was that in some digging, a burial ground was found, so the scope would have to be re-sited. And it's a little more complex, as some native Hawaiian groups do feel that astronomy is a natural extension of the original Polynesians who used navigating by stars to come to Hawaii. One other aspect we were told is that it's also required that if a new scope goes up, an old one has to come down, so there will be no 'growth', just maintenance of the current (or less even) number of scopes on top. It was interesting to view them all, though sadly none were open to enter, and at the first, the gate was open but an occupant came out smiling at us, slammed the gate shut and returned inside. None of us were even close to entering, respecting the gate there, open or not.

[CaseyW]

You're my favorite science communicator, along with Anton Petrov. Always appreciate the new videos!

[SKy_the_Thunder]

A note on "commercialization of space exploration":
That also comes with "commercialization of space". The same company currently trying to be the next big player in rocketry is the same company cluttering the sky with _thousands_ of satellites, massively disrupting ground-based telescopes.
And it's not like it the total cost will be any lower if you add a profit-oriented middleman. "We can benefit from their commercial interest" only works until you're so dependent on them, going back is near impossible. We've seen what the privatization of other public infrastructure has done in the past - from rail over power to the prison system in some places... They typically end up delivering the bare minimum while collecting subsidies - and getting bailed out whenever they were too aggressive at cutting costs, because they're "too essential" to fail.

[Michaelca]

I really stopped moving 25 years ago because my father was in the RCMP which had us moving around every 4-6 years. I would lose friends over and over until even had no friends. When I got to the place where I live now, I said never again. I have been here now for over 25 years and I won't leave at all. This is my home!

[Skootavision]

I now call it a toenail moon. You did this to me, Dr Becky, I *did not ask for this* 🤣 Now *that* is an influencer!

Thanks for the ongoing content. You are an extremely trustworthy source, but you don't expect us to take your word for it, and talk us through data that non-experts couldn't make sense of let alone interpret. I don't comment on your videos often but I wanted to say thanks.

[DavidDatura]

What an unfortunate situation with all these telescopes, disappointing…

[leonardhopper]

For those of you that do welding and torch work. I found that a #12 welding lense stacked with a #3 torch lense does provide sufficient protection for viewing the eclipse and sunspot spotting. If it stills feels a little too bright, swap out one of the lenses for the next step higher. Enjoy!

[iraviya]

Aww, that's sad about Chandra. I'm really surprised by that--I mean, we're seeing stuff now like overlays combining imagery from JWST and Chandra, and it rocks. I don't understand why they're shutting this thing down. This is the best time in history for Chandra to get science done because there's so much more to correlate its observations with.

[aozoratenshu]

An accretion disc 7 LY across is just staggering.