Astronomers from The Australian National University have led an international collaboration to discover the fastest-growing supermassive black hole from the last nine billion years of the Universe’s history.
The energetic supermassive black hole, known as a quasar, is consuming an enormous amount of material - the equivalent of swallowing the mass of Earth on a per-second basis. This powers the behemoth to shine 7,000 times brighter than all of the Milky Way’s stars combined. And whilst it is located at a redshift distance of z = 0.83 (about 11.4 billion light-years away), it’s bright enough for backyard astronomers to even capture it with their home telescopes.
Supermassive black holes reside in the centre of most galaxies, and unlike their stellar-mass smaller cousins - which have masses in the range of five - 150 times that of the Sun, these gargantuan objects have masses in the millions or billions of times that of our parent star.
The Fastest Growing Supermassive Black Hole in 9 Billion Years | Spaceaustralia
The energetic supermassive black hole, known as a quasar, is consuming an enormous amount of material - the equivalent of swallowing the mass of Earth on a per-second basis. This powers the behemoth to shine 7,000 times brighter than all of the Milky Way’s stars combined. And whilst it is located at a redshift distance of z = 0.83 (about 11.4 billion light-years away), it’s bright enough for backyard astronomers to even capture it with their home telescopes.
Supermassive black holes reside in the centre of most galaxies, and unlike their stellar-mass smaller cousins - which have masses in the range of five - 150 times that of the Sun, these gargantuan objects have masses in the millions or billions of times that of our parent star.
The Fastest Growing Supermassive Black Hole in 9 Billion Years | Spaceaustralia
