The redshift 7.085 quasar ULAS J1120+0641

ULAS J1120+0641 is the rather prosaic name for a remarkable astronomical object: a bright quasar (the glowing disk of gas and dust around a billion Solar mass black hole in the core of a galaxy) that is seen as it was when the Universe was just 5 per cent of its current age. The discovery of ULAS J1120+0641 was announced in Nature (2011, v474, p616) and the relevant data are available below. ULAS J1120+0641 also made a fair number of media appearances, which are also listed; in particular the statements at the top of the Wikipedia entry for ULAS J1120+0641 that it not even close to being the brightest quasar known (as was reported in some places) are completely correct.

Data

The combined optical-NIR spectrum of ULAS J1120+0641 and the estimate of the intrinsic spectrum is available here (spectrum.dat; ASCII text file; 140 kB). (Note that the spectrum supplied here differs slightly from the spectrum shown in the discovery paper, as explained further in the comments at the top of the file.)

Media

Discovery

• BBC (30/6/2011)
• Time (29/6/2011)
• Hawai'i Herald Tribune (29/6/2011)
• Science News (29/6/2011)
• The Associated Press (29/6/2011)
• Scientific American (29/6/2011)
• Cosmos (30/6/2011)
• Gemini Telescope (29/6/2011)
• STFC (29/6/2011)
• ESO (29/6/2011)
• El Pais (30/6/2011)
• BBC Material World interview with Steve Warren (30/6/2011)
• UPI (29/6/2011)
• Wired (30/6/2011)
• International Business Times (30/6/2011)
• Hawai'i Star Advertiser (30/6/2011)
• Astronomy (30/6/2011)
• Astronomy Now (30/6/2011)
• Daily Mirror (30/6/2011)
• BBC Science In Action
• Astronomy Central (30/6/2011)
• Science Daily
• The Daily Mail
• KITV, Hawai'i (29/6/2011)
• KITV interview with Paul Hirst (30/6/2011)
• Physics Inventions
• Sky & Telescope (30/6/2011)
• Irish Weather (1/7/2011)

Carbon detection

• BBC