Scientists spot extremely luminous object powered by supermassive black hole using Coonabarabran telescope
Astronomers believe they have discovered the fastest-growing black hole of the past 9bn years.
“The light that we’re seeing from this growing black hole has been travelling to us for about 7bn years,” he said. The big bang occurred an estimated 13.8bn years ago.There are other similar sized black holes “but they all tend to be much earlier in the history of the universe where the mergers between galaxies was much more common”, Onken said.
Why J1144 has eluded discovery for so long may be partly due to its position in the night sky. “Historically, people have avoided looking very close to the plane of the Milky Way age because there’s so many stars, there’s so many contaminants, that it’d be very hard to find anything more distant,” Onken said.