Astronomers detect blazar OP 313, the most distant of its kind, 8 billion light-years away
Astronomers at the University of Geneva and the LST-1 and MAGIC telescopes on La Palma, Spain, report the most distant very high-energy blazar yet recorded, OP 313, whose light has taken eight billion years to reach Earth. According to the team, the gamma-ray emission was fuelled by relativistic electrons accelerated in a jet from the central supermassive black hole. Published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, the findings are presented as a step forward in understanding flat-spectrum radio quasars.
Bottom line — The CTAO's Large-Sized Telescope sub-array, due to be inaugurated on La Palma on 15 October 2026, is expected to extend the observable gamma-ray horizon further.
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The Geneva team says OP 313's light shows the universe as it was about five billion years after the Big Bang, during the period known as cosmic noon, roughly 11 billion years ago.
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According to the University of Geneva release, the gamma rays lost energy through pair production with the extragalactic background light, which made the signal hard to detect.
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A separate study reported by the US National Science Foundation describes a different blazar, J0410-0139, at 12.9 billion light-years, which its authors say challenges models of early black hole growth.
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Eduardo Bañados, first author of the NSF-reported study, argues that finding one jet pointed at Earth implies many similar active nuclei existed in that era.
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Newswise, citing the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, reports J0410-0139's black hole has a mass of 700 million times that of the Sun.
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Space.com quotes Axel Arbet-Engels describing the shift from cosmic noon to a calmer universe as the reason the blazar's emission is now rare.
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The LST collaboration includes more than 500 scientists and engineers from 25 institutions across 11 countries, according to the University of Geneva.