A supermassive black hole growing so fast it shines 7,000 times brighter than the entire Milky Way has just been found, hiding in plain sight.
growing so fast it shines 7,000 times brighter than the entire Milky Way has just been found, hiding in plain sight.
And there it was, just hanging out, lurking unnoticed until now. But because of where it sits – 18 degrees above the galactic plane – previous surveys looking for quasars have just managed to miss it, only skimming as close as 20 degrees above the disk of the Milky Way. "Another team used an ultraviolet satellite to search for these luminous objects across the whole sky, but J1144 fell into a small gap in their coverage. But the source is bright enough that it appears in photographs taken of the sky as far back as 1901, so it's definitely a case of hiding in plain sight."Apart from supernova explosions that emit gamma-ray bursts, quasars are the brightest single objects in the Universe.
After about 9 billion years ago, this furious quasar activity seems to have calmed down somewhat, making J1144 a fascinating weirdo. The quasar is so bright that someone with a backyard telescope could go out and look at it with their own eyes. "None of them are as bright as J1144, but they'll help paint a more complete picture of how common this rapid growth phase might be, and that will help us to understand the physical mechanism behind it," Onken told ScienceAlert.