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- By Jonathan Amos
- scientific correspondent
Artwork: J0529-4351’s bright core is powered by a supermassive black hole
The most luminous object ever detected has been sighted in the distant Universe.
It is a quasar, the bright core of a galaxy powered by a gigantic black hole about 17 billion times the mass of our Sun.
Known as J0529-4351, the object’s power was confirmed in observations made by the Very Large Telescope in Chile.
J0529-4351 was actually recorded in data many years ago, but its true glory has only just been recognized.
“It’s 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,” said Christopher Onken, one of the astronomers at the Australian National University. (ANU) working on VLT observations.
The term quasar is used to describe a galaxy with a very active and energetic nucleus. The black hole at the center of said galaxy is attracting matter towards itself at a prodigious rate.
As this material accelerates around the hole, it tears apart and emits an enormous amount of light, to the point that even an object as distant as J0529-4351 is still visible to us.
The emission from this quasar has taken a staggering 12 billion years to reach the VLT detectors.
Everything about the object is surprising.
The scientists involved say the energy emitted makes the quasar 500 billion times more luminous than the Sun.
“All this light is coming from a hot accretion disk measuring seven light-years across. This must be the largest accretion disk in the Universe,” said ANU PhD student and co-author Samuel Lai.
Seven light years are approximately 15,000 times the distance between the Sun and Neptune’s orbit.