Astronomers have discovered the brightest object in the Universe (3 photos)

A team of Australian scientists has found a quasar 500 trillion times brighter than the Sun. Remarkably, the object, known as J0529-4351, was hiding in plain sight and had previously been misclassified as a star.





The rotating disk around the quasar's black hole - a glowing swirl of gas and other matter - resembles a cosmic hurricane.

"This quasar is the most turbulent place in the Universe that we know of," said lead author Christian Wolf of the Australian National University.

The black hole powering the quasar is more than 17 billion times more massive than the Sun.



Observations at observatories in Australia and the Atacama Desert (Chile), as well as computer simulations, found that J0529-4351 absorbs the equivalent of 370 suns per year, or about one per day.

The quasar is located at a distance of 12 billion light years from us and has existed since the early days of the Universe (1 light year is approximately 9.5 trillion km).