Bright supermassive black hole
Scientists have found the fastest growing black hole and described it as a monster, daily absorbing mass, equated to the Sun. To search, we had to retire to 12 billion years in the early dark centuries of space, when this supermassive black hole in size reached 20 billion suns with a 1% growth rate for every million years.
The black hole is growing so fast that it shines thousands of times brighter than the entire galaxy, because of the gases absorbed daily. If this monster sat down in the center of the Milky Way, then it would seem to be 10 times brighter than the Full Moon.
The energy emitted by the black hole (quasar) was mostly UV light, but X-rays also appeared. We are lucky that it did not settle in the center of our galaxy, because then a huge amount of X-rays did not allow life to originate on Earth. The SkyMapper telescope at Siding Spring Observatory recorded this light in the near-infrared range. Such large and fast-growing black holes are extremely rare and SkyMapper had to spend months searching for them. The Gaia satellite, which measures the motion of celestial objects, also helped in the detection.
The discovery was confirmed with a spectrograph using a 2.3-meter telescope to separate colors into spectral lines. Black holes shine upon absorption, so they can be used as beacons to see and study the formation of elements in the early galaxies of the Universe. In addition, such objects clear the fog around them and make the space more transparent.
