Astronomers identify quasar that is brightest object in universe, and eats a Sun every day
Astronomers have discovered what is believed to be the brightest object in the universe – which shines 500 trillion times brighter than our Sun and is more than 17 billion times as large.
It is the luminous core of an early galaxy and is powered by a supermassive black hole that swallows the equivalent of our Sun each day.
Researchers described it as the most violent place in the known universe.
The quasar was found by an Australian-led team and reported on Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Researchers said a super-bright, highly energetic disc of gas and dust swirling around the quasar’s black hole acts like a cosmic hurricane, actively adding material through a process called accretion. Researchers determined the quasar swallows about 370 solar masses each year – about one Solar System Sun a day.
That comes close to what scientists believe is the upper limit of what is possible, but they say further research and observations are needed.
“This quasar is the most violent place that we know in the universe,” said lead author Christian Wolf of Australian National University in Canberra.
The European Southern Observatory spotted the object – known as J0529-4351 – during a 1980 sky survey, but it was mistakenly identified as a star.
It was not named a quasar, the extremely active and luminous core of a galaxy, until last year. Observations by telescopes in Australia and Chile’s Atacama Desert confirmed its identity.
“The exciting thing about this quasar is that it was hiding in plain sight and was misclassified as a star previously,” said Priyamvada Natarajan, professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University, who was not involved in the study.
The quasar is 12 billion light years away and has been around since the early days of the universe. A light year is 9.46 trillion kilometres.