Astronomers discover the brightest object of known cosmos that eats ‘just over a Sun per day’, and it’s still growing

Astrophysicists have discovered the brightest black hole in the known cosmos, named J0529-4351, employing the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. This quasar is the most luminous object ever observed, with a mass of 17 billion Suns. Its light travelled over 12 billion years to reach Earth, providing important insights into the universe’s early stages.

Astronomers have discovered a black hole that is believed to be the brightest in the known cosmos. Employing the ESO’s (European Southern Observatory) VLT (Very Large Telescope), astrophysicists found the bright quasar which is believed to be the most luminous object ever observed. “We have discovered the fastest-growing black hole known to date. It has a mass of 17 billion Suns and eats just over a Sun per day. This makes it the most luminous object in the known Universe” says Christian Wolf (an astronomer at the Australian National University and lead author of the study).

Quasars are the glowing cores of faraway galaxies powered by SMBHs (supermassive black holes). These black holes collect matter from their surroundings, emitting vast quantities of light in the process. Thus, quasars are some of the brightest objects in the sky, visible even from great distances. Usually, the most luminous quasars indicate the fastest-growing SMBHs.

But, finding quasars needs precise observational data from large expanses of the sky. The enormous datasets involved often require the use of machine-learning models to distinguish quasars from other celestial objects. But, these models are trained on existing data, which limits their capability to identify new, more luminous quasars. A new quasar of unparalleled luminosity might be misclassified as a star not far from Earth.

An automated analysis of data from the ESA’s Gaia satellite originally misclassified J0529-4351 as a star due to its brightness. Researchers at ANU ultimately identified it as a faraway quasar last year using observations from the ANU 2.3-meter telescope stationed at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. Recognizing it as the most luminous quasar ever observed needed more precise measurements, which were gotten using the X-shooter spectrograph on ESO’s (European Southern Observatory) VLT (Very Large Telescope) in the Chilean Atacama Desert.

It’s 500 trillion times brighter compared to our Sun

J0529-4351, is positioned so far from Earth that its light took over 12 billion years to reach us. The matter being pulled in toward this black hole forms a disc that releases so much energy that the quasar is over 500 trillion times luminous compared to the sun. Samuel Lai (ANU PhD student and co-author) remarked, “All this light comes from a hot accretion disc that measures seven light-years in diameter — this must be the largest accretion disc in the Universe.”