Astronomers have discovered a record-breaking quasar with a black hole at its center, shining 500 trillion times brighter than the sun.
This distant quasar, named J0529-4351, is more than 17 billion times the mass of the sun.
It was initially thought to be a star but later identified as a quasar last year.
The quasar is described as the most violent place in the universe, with the black hole consuming the equivalent of a sun a day.
“This quasar is the most violent place that we know in the universe,” lead author Christian Wolf of Australian National University said.
“The exciting thing about this quasar is that it was hiding in plain sight and was misclassified as a star previously,” Yale University’s Priyamvada Natarajan wrote.
Further observations and modeling suggest it is gobbling up 370 suns a year.
The quasar is located 12 billion light-years away and has been around since the early universe.
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