This galaxy's core is 500 trillion times more luminous than Sun. It's not getting powered by a star but...

Astronomers have made a record-breaking, shining discovery with the help of the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) by spotting the brightest quasar ever found, which is now being called the most luminous cosmic object in space.

Quasars are the shining cores of distant galaxies that get their powers from the supermassive black holes.

The reason why this quasar is shining brightest is because its black hole is growing mass and has emerged as the fastest-growing black hole to have been found to date.

The matter is collected from the surroundings by such black holes through a process that is so energetic that it releases vast amounts of light.

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The light released is so high in amount that some of the quasars turn out to be the brightest objects in our sky.

Generally, the most luminous quasars are just indications of the fastest-growing supermassive black holes lurking in space.

“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,” said Christian Wolf, who is the lead author of the study published inNature Astronomy and an astronomer at the Australian National University (ANU).

How the supermassive black hole is making quasar shine

The quasar, which is known as J0529-4351, is so distant from Earth that its light travelled over 12 billion years to reach our planet.

The matter which is getting pulled into its black hole, like a disc, has been emitting too much energy, because of which the quasar is more than 500 trillion times more luminous in comparison to the Sun.

“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," said ANU PhD student and co-author Samuel Lai.

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This quasar was hiding in plain sight till it was found. “It is 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 co-author Christopher Onken, an astronomer at ANU.

He said that this cosmic object appeared in images from the ESO Schmidt Southern Sky Survey, which date back to 1980, but was not recognised as a quasar till decades later.

(With inputs from agencies)