Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label J0529-4351 quasar

THE BRIGHTEST OBJECT IN THE SKY

Today, no politics, no wars, no Trump.  All space science, for astronomers found what may be the Universe's brightest object in the sky,  J0529-4351 , and it's humongous. Out there 12 billion light-years away is a quasar with a black hole at its heart, growing so fast that it swallows the equivalent of a Sun a day. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. From your early science courses you must remember that the Sun is 92 million miles from us. A light year ( which is a unit of length ) is equivalent to doing 31,500 round trips to the sun. Thus, you would need to do that 12 billion times to get to J0529-4351. This quasar shines 500 trillion times brighter than our Sun.   That black hole powering that quasar is more than 17 billion times more immense than our Sun.  But there are bigger ones, for at the center of the galaxy cluster Abell 1201 is a black hole equivalent to 30 billion Suns. This is the most violent place in our Universe. Age?  Began to form not long after the Big Bang.