Astronomers have discovered the brightest object in the universe to date. It is a quasar, the center of the galaxy. The supermassive black hole feeding the quasar also set a record.
Supermassive black holes form when massive stars collapse under their own weight. A supermassive black hole pulls all the matter, including light, in the area into a single point. This creates a bright disk of matter around the black hole. This is collectively called a quasar.
This quasar is called J0529-4351, and is more than twelve billion light-years away. This means that what we see now happened twelve billion years ago. It took that long for the light to reach us. Astronomers initially thought it was a “normal” star, until it became clear how far the Earth was from the object.
The brightness of a quasar is equivalent to that of 500 trillion suns. That's why we can see it even though it's far away from us. “This is the brightest object in the observable universe,” said lead researcher Christian Wolff. “It literally shines on us,” adds co-researcher Christopher Onken.
The “hungiest black hole” ever
The black hole's mass is seventeen billion times greater than the mass of our sun. Every 24 hours there is another full sun, To write Scientists in their research. The black hole swallows this energy, making it the “hungiest” black hole ever.
Astronomers viewed the object with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (which). The ultra-powerful telescope is located far away in Chile, because there is less light pollution. From that spot, space is best viewed from Earth.
The discovery and study of distant supermassive black holes could shed light on how galaxies form and evolve. Then we can also better understand how our galaxy, the Milky Way, came into being. The Milky Way also orbits a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*.
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