Astronomers Discover the Brightest Known Object in the Universe, Shining 500 Trillion Times as Bright as the Sun

The quasar—a glowing, active core of a galaxy—has a black hole at its center that consumes more than a sun’s-worth of mass each day

Will Sullivan
Daily Correspondent

February 21, 2024



An artist's rendering of the quasar that set the record for the universe's brightest object, with its black hole at its center. ESO / M. Kornmesser


Astronomers have found the brightest known object in the universe—a glowing core of a galaxy, called a quasar, located 12 billion light-years away.

Quasars, as a whole, are the brightest objects in the cosmos, each consisting of a supermassive black hole that’s actively devouring an orbiting disc of gas and dust. But the black hole in this record-setting quasar is gobbling up more than a sun’s-worth of mass every day, making it the fastest growing black hole scientists have ever seen, according to a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA).

The gargantuan object stretches about seven light-years across, and it puts our sun’s luminosity to shame—the quasar shines more than 500 trillion times brighter than the star in our solar system, the researchers reported Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

“This quasar is the most violent place that we know in the universe,” Christian Wolf, lead author of the new study and an astrophysicist at Australian National University, tells Marcia Dunn of the Associated Press (AP).

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/astronomers-discover-the-brightest-known-object-in-the-universe-shining-500-trillion-times-as-bright-as-the-sun-180983815/