Astronomers Find What May Be the Universe ’ s Brightest Object With a Black Hole Devouring a Sun a Day

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Astronomers have discovered what may be the brightest object in the universe, a quasar with a black hole at its heart growing so fast that it swallows the equivalent of a sun a day. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The record-breaking quasar shines 500 trillion times brighter than our sun. The black hole powering this distant quasar is more than 17 billion times more immense than our sun, an Australian-led team reported Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. While the quasar resembles a mere dot in images, scientists envision a ferocious place. The rotating disk around the quasar’s black hole—the luminous swirling gas and other matter from gobbled-up stars—is like a cosmic hurricane. “This quasar is the most violent place that we know in the universe,” lead author Christian Wolf of Australian National University said in an email. Read More: This Is the First Picture of a Black Hole — And That’s a Big, Even Supermassive, Deal The European Southern Observatory spotted the object, J0529-4351, during a 1980 sky survey, but it was thought to be a star. It was not identified as a quasar—the extremely active and luminous core of a galaxy — until last year. Observations by telescopes in Australia and Chile’s Atacama Desert clinched it. “The exciting thing about this quasar is that it was hiding in plain sight and was misclassified as a star previously,&rdq...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized News Desk overnight wire Source Type: news