black hole<\/a> to date as well as the brightest object ever seen.<\/p>It is so far away it has taken its light 12 billion years to reach us. <\/p>
This cosmic feast causes its accretion disc to glow so brightly its over 500 trillion times more luminous than the Sun.<\/p>
\u201cAll this light comes from a hot accretion disc that measures seven light-years in diameter \u2014 this must be the largest accretion disc in the Universe,” says Samuel Lai, also from ANU.<\/p>
The object is so bright that many automated searches, which use previous observations as a baseline, passed it over as being too bright to be a quasar. <\/p>
It was only when it was re-examined with the 2.3m telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia that its true nature became clear.<\/p>
Quasars such as J0529-4351 are bright enough that we can see them across enormous distances, giving us a window back into the earliest times of the Universe. <\/p>
They also allow us to study the usually invisible supermassive black holes in the hearts of galaxies, which in turn gives us insight into how galaxies form and evolve.<\/p>
\u201cPersonally, I simply like the chase,\u201d says Christian Wolf from Australian National University (ANU) who led the study. \u201cFor a few minutes a day, I get to feel like a child again, playing treasure hunt, and now I bring everything to the table that I have learned since.\u201d<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n
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