Astronomers discover fastest-growing black hole to date

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, astronomers have identified a record-breaking quasar, called J059-4351, which is not only the brightest of its kind but also the most luminous object known in the Universe to date.

Quasars are the intensely bright cores of distant galaxies and are powered by supermassive black holes. In this case, the supermassive black hole has a mass 17 billion times that of the Sun and is growing in mass by the equivalent of another Sun per day, making it the fastest-growing black hole ever known.

The matter being pulled in toward this black hole, in the form of a disc, emits so much energy that J0529-4351 is over 500 trillion times more luminous than our Sun, making it the most luminous quasar 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 (ANU) and lead author of the study published today in Nature Astronomy.

The X-shooter spectrograph on ESO's VLT in the Chilean Atacama Desert provided crucial data to identify this record-breaking quasar.

"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," says co-author Christopher Onken, an astronomer at ANU.

📣 Using ESO's #VLT, astronomers have characterised a truly record-breaking #quasar! 1/ Discover more: https://t.co/5o52yuoUHyArtist's impression by ESO/M. Kornmesser pic.twitter.com/7Nr8dd76dU

— ESO (@ESO) February 19, 2024

The fastest-growing black hole will also be a perfect target for the GRAVITY+ upgrade on ESO's VLT Interferometer (VLTI) that will enable the imaging of fainter and more remote astronomical objects than previously possible and also accurately measure the mass of black holes, including those far away from Earth.