Astronomers have discovered the brightest quasar yet, which is more than 12 billion light-years from Earth, the European Southern Observatory (OES), which operates the telescope that made the discovery, announced this Monday.
Quasars are the bright nuclei of distant galaxies, formed by black holes (dense dark bodies that arise from the gravitational pull they exert on matter) with colossal masses.
Quasar J0529-4351’s black hole is growing at a mass equivalent to the Sun per day, “making it the fastest-growing black hole discovered to date,” OES, which operates the VLT, said in a statement. in Chile, at the origins of the discovery, published in the specialized journal Nature Astronomy.
According to the OES, “black holes that power quasars remove matter from their surroundings through a process so energetic that it causes the object to emit enormous amounts of light.”
“This is why quasars are among the brightest objects in the sky, and even the most distant of them are visible from Earth,” the statement emphasizes.
In the case of quasar J0529-4351, it took more than 12 billion years for its light to reach Earth.
The OES, an astronomical organization of which Portugal is a member, adds that the material attracted to the disk-shaped black hole emits so much energy that it causes the quasar “J0529-4351” to spin more than 500 billion times. brighter than the sun.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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