Using state-of-the-art technology and sophisticated data analysis tools, a team of astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy has developed a new and powerful technique to directly determine the mass of an active galaxy at a distance of nearly 9 billion light-years from Earth.
This pioneering method promises a new approach for studying the co-evolution of galaxies and their central black holes. First results indicate that for galaxies, the best part of cosmic history was not a time of sweeping changes.
The full release text, background information and images can be found here:
http://www.mpia.de/Public/menu_q2.php?Aktuelles/PR/2011/PR110930/PR_110930_en.html
The ADS entry for the article by Inskip et al. can be found here:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011ApJ…739…90I
