Astronomers discover a supermassive black hole that gobbles up the equivalent of one Earth every second.
They were using the SkyMapper telescope at Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran, between the Central West and North West Slopes regions of New South Wales.
Here, they were able to look at the various wavelengths of light coming from the object, which they called SMSS J114447.77-430859.3, or J1144 for short.it didn't look anything like a giant star. From Earth, these luminous objects look a bit like stars, but their light actually comes from the ring of gas, dust and stars swirling around the black hole, known as an accretion disk.
"The gas is kind of funnelling down into a pancake shape, and that material then heats up through friction," Dr Onken said.