Astronomers discover what could be universe's brightest object

Astronomers have discovered what could be the brightest object in the universe.

Transcript

00:00 Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory say they have discovered what may be the brightest

00:07 object in the universe. It's a quasar with a black hole at its center, some 12 billion

00:13 light years from Earth. Quasars are the bright cores at the center of distant galaxies. Calculations

00:19 indicate it's 500 trillion times brighter than the sun.

00:25 This outshines tens of thousands of galaxies just like the Milky Way. So this is 10,000

00:31 times brighter than our entire Milky Way. And the Milky Way is 100 billion stars. So

00:35 this is one supermassive black hole versus 100 billion stars.

00:39 The object was first detected in 1980, but was thought to be a star. That's now been

00:45 changed by the latest observations in computer modeling, which show the quasar is devouring

00:50 the equivalent of 370 suns per year. It's also still growing, but astronomers don't

00:55 yet know how fast.

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