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A Black Hole Star at Cosmic Noon: Extreme Balmer Break, Photospheric Continuum, and Broad Absorption by Thick Winds in a Little Red Dot at z = 1.7

  • Authors: Alberto Torralba, Jorryt Matthee, Andrea Weibel, Rohan P. Naidu, Yilun Ma, Aidan P. Cloonan, Aayush Desai, Anna de Graaff, Jenny E. Greene, Christian Kragh Jespersen, Ivan G. Kramarenko, Sara Mascia, Pascal A. Oesch, Wendy Q. Sun, Christina C. Williams

Alberto Torralba et al 2026 The Astrophysical Journal Letters 1005 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 6.

Geometric configurations for the absorber. We illustrate three scenarios that could give rise to the observed Balmer absorption in PAN-BH*-1. In scenario (a), the obscuring agent is a thick screen of gas with a certain bulk velocity, and turbulent motions produce the broadening of the absorption trough. In (b), there are two (or more) absorbers with opposite velocities in the line of sight. These first two scenarios are dynamically unstable; therefore, variability is expected in the absorption. Lastly, in (c), we observed an extended source through a disk wind with a rotational component (vϕ) in addition to the poloidal (nonazimuthal) velocity (vp). In the last scenario, the redshifted absorption is produced by streamlines that oppose the observer when projected along the line of sight, despite the fact that the gas is outflowing from the central source.

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