This finding is an important step forward in efforts to understand how black holes and galaxies formed in the early universe, according to astronomers at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and the European Southern Observatory. A recent press release by Johns Hopkins University reports that researchers anticipate that many more quasars will be found soon through a special set of observational data that NASA is releasing to the general astronomy community this week.
Astronomers believe that both types of quasars are fueled by massive black holes.
Unlike a type I quasar, however, a type II quasar is surrounded by an occluding cloud of gas and dust, which reduces its brightness in visible light. The cloud, though, has little effect on X-ray radiation from the quasar. As the quasar matures, the extremely powerful radiation it emits disperses the shroud of gas and dust. We're very eager to get a sense of how prevalent they are, and to compare that to type I quasars. Astronomers first postulated the existence of type II quasars in the early 1980s, as they were beginning to agree on a unified model of quasars and other distant, bright objects thought to be powered by massive black holes.