QSO J0100-2708

QSO J0100-2708 is a quasar located in the constellation Sculptor. With a redshift of 3.520000, the object is located 11.5 billion light-years away from Earth and contains a flat-spectrum radio source found brighter compared to S4.8 GHz=65 mJy.

Characteristics
A luminous quasar at the redshift of (z ≥ 3), QSO J0100-2708 is classified a radio-loud and a candidate for gigahertz-peaked spectrum (GPS) sources. It is an important tool for studies according to researchers since these high redshift quasars like this, provide information of the growth of supermassive black holes and evolution of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in the early universe. Moreover, it is possible QSO J0100-2708 evolved through continuous gas exchanges that is surrounded by circum-galactic medium (CGM) and intergalactic medium (IGM) providing cold, T ~ 104 K, gas accretion. These gases are then dispersed through feedback mechanisms driven by galactic winds and accretions through black holes where they increase up to ≈0.1 decimal exponent at τ_{H I}=1 to ≈1 decimal exponent at τ_{H I}=10^2,.

Observed by the XQ-100 survey, an ESO Large Program obtaining X-shooter spectra of 100 3.5 < z < 4.7 QSOs in period between February 10, 2012, and February 23, 2014, QSO J0100-2708 is found to have an intervening Lyman-alpha system. Such of the intervening Lyman-alpha systems like in QSO J0100-2708, contains metal absorbers with an O i equivalent widths of W1302 > 0.05, declining as the redshift decreases. This means the quasar has a weak metal-enriched gas around the host galaxy that is driven by a weak metagalactic ionizing background.

It is theorized that QSO J0100-2708 has star-forming regions in its host galaxy containing massive stars with characteristic mass of ~10 M⊙ and a maximum mass possibly extending up to ~1000 M⊙. They exploded rapidly as supernovas thus enriching the surrounding gas with the first heavy elements, but soon became metal poor afterwards as the heavy elements decreased.

Black hole
Using the data from ESO, researchers have found out the supermassive black hole in QSO J0100-2708 has an estimated solar mass of log (MBH/M⊙) = 8.6−10.3 with its bolometric luminosity estimated from the 3000 Å continuum in the range log (Lbol/erg s−1 ) = 46.7 − 48.0. This enables wide follow-up research in quasar astrophysics, from its chemical abundance to the evolution in the broad-line regions and radiatively driven quasar outflows.