Astronomers have discovered a quasar, the brightest of its kind, which is reportedly as bright as 500 trillion suns and is powered by a supermassive black hole.
“We have discovered the fastest-growing black hole known to date. It has a mass of 17 billion Suns, and eats just over a Sun per day. This makes it the most luminous object in the known Universe,” says Christian Wolf, an astronomer at the Australian National University (ANU) and lead author of the study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy.
The quasar, named J0529-4351, is so distant from Earth that they say its light took approximately 12 billion years to reach us. Meanwhile, its light is more than 500 trillion times more luminous than the Sun.
“All this light comes from a hot accretion disc that measures seven light-years in diameter — this must be the largest accretion disc in the Universe," said ANU PhD student and co-author Samuel Lai.
Seven light-years is roughly 15,000 times the distance from the Sun to the orbit of Neptune.
Co-author Christopher Onken, an astronomer at ANU, noted that the quasar was hiding in plain sight prior to its discovery.
“It is a surprise that it has remained unknown until today, when we already know about a million less impressive quasars. It has literally been staring us in the face until now.”
He explained that the object initially appeared in images from the ESO Schmidt Southern Sky Survey dating back to 1980, but it was not identified as a quasar until decades later.
According to Space.com, the supermassive black hole at the heart of the quasar is estimated to be between 17 billion and 19 billion times the mass of the sun. Every year, it consumes "accretes," the gas and dust equivalent to 370 solar masses.
"Personally, I simply like the chase. For a few minutes a day, I get to feel like a child again, playing treasure hunt, and now I bring everything to the table that I have learned since," Wolf said concerning the quasar’s discovery.
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Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
