QUASAR-JO43947.08+163415.7

Scientists have discovered the energetic core of a distant galaxy that shatters the record for the brightest object in the early universe, blazing with the light equivalent to 600 trillion suns. Researchers identified the object- a black-hole-powered entity called a quasar, among the universe's brightest inhabitants- because of a chance alignment with a dim galaxy closer to Earth that magnified its light. The quasar is 12.8 billion light-years away, and it shines at the heart of a forming galaxy during an early part of universe's history called the epoch of reionization, when the first stars and galaxies began to burn away a haze of neutral hydrogen across the cosmos. The Hubble Space Telescope team said "we don't expect to find many quasars brighter than that in the whole observable universe. The quasar gets its brightness from a supermassive black hole. Material from a disc of gas surrounding the black hole falls in, leading to blasts of energy at many different wavelengths. The black hole powering this quasar is several hundred million times the mass of the Sun. Learning more about this quasar, which appears to be producing 10,000 stars per year, can teach researchers more about this distant pivotal time in history, when the first stars and galaxies were kindling and shaping the universe to what we know today.