Most Intense and Ravenous Black Hole Discovered thus far

An incredibly bright object has been observed in the far reaches of the Universe.

This is a quasar, the luminous centre of a galaxy fueled by an enormous black hole 17 billion times the mass of our Sun.

Referred to as J0529-4351, the object’s strength was validated through observations made by the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

In a recent report published in Nature Astronomy, researchers revealed that the black hole is incredibly hungry, devouring the equivalent of one Sun’s mass daily.

J0529-4351 was actually captured in data many years ago, but its true significance has only recently been acknowledged.

“It’s quite surprising that this information has stayed hidden until now, especially considering we’ve already discovered around a million less remarkable quasars.” “It has been right in front of us all this time,” remarked Christopher Onken, an astronomer from the Australian National University (ANU) involved in the VLT observations.

Quasars are galaxies with extremely active and energetic cores. The black hole in the centre of that galaxy is attracting matter towards it at a tremendous speed.

As this substance is propelled around the hole, it gets shredded and releases a significant amount of light, making even a faraway object like J0529-4351 visible to us.

The emission from this quasar has travelled for an impressive 12 billion years to reach the detectors at the VLT.

The object is truly remarkable in every way.

According to the scientists, the energy emitted by the quasar makes it over 500 trillion times more luminous than the Sun.

The light emanates from a hot accretion disc spanning seven light-years in diameter. “This has to be the biggest accretion disc in the Universe,” remarked Samuel Lai, a PhD student at ANU and co-author.

Seven light-years equals approximately 15,000 times the distance from the Sun to the orbit of Neptune.