Researchers now have a better understanding of the black hole known as J2157 and its gluttonous behavior.
The fastest-growing black hole in the universe is 34 billion times the mass of our sun and feasts on a meal the equivalent of our sun each day, according to a study.
This massive, hungry black hole was first identified and studied by researchers in May 2018. Previously, they believed it consumed the mass equivalent to our sun every two days. Now, they have a better understanding of this monster black hole and its gluttonous behavior.
The study was published Wednesday in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Located in the constellation Telescopium, researchers say it’s the first stellar system with a black hole that’s close enough to be seen with the naked eye!
The black hole is known as J2157 and exists more than 12 billion light-years back in the distant universe. Astronomers are trying to understand how such massive black holes could evolve during the early days of the universe. The researchers continue to search for more massive black holes like this one to understand how they have grown.
"It's the biggest black hole that's been weighed in this early period of the universe," said Christopher Onken, lead study author and research fellow at the Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, in a statement. "We're seeing it at a time when the universe was only 1.2 billion years old, less than 10 per cent of its current age."
It dwarfs the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A* in our own Milky Way galaxy.
"The black hole's mass is about 8,000 times bigger than the black hole in the center of the Milky Way," Onken said. "If the Milky Way's black hole wanted to grow that fat, it would have to swallow two thirds of all the stars in our galaxy."
The SkyMapper telescope at the Australian National University's Siding Spring Observatory was able to detect the black hole by its near-infrared light after it traveled across billions of light-years to reach us on Earth.
Monster force of nature
Astronomers first discovered the J2157 black hole due to its brightness in ultraviolet light. While light can't escape from black holes, this black hole emits X-rays and ultraviolet light that are created due to its enormous appetite.
Astronomers have also defined this particular black hole as the most luminous known quasar. Quasars are supermassive black holes in galaxies that emit so much energy through their gaseous disks that they appear like stars through telescopes.
"This black hole is growing so rapidly that it's shining thousands of times more brightly than an entire galaxy, due to all of the gases it sucks in daily that cause lots of friction and heat," said Christian Wolf, an author on both the 2018 and new studies and associate professor at Australian National University, when the black hole was first discovered two years ago.
"If we had this monster sitting at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, it would appear 10 times brighter than a full moon. It would appear as an incredibly bright pin-point star that would almost wash out all of the stars in the sky. It would likely make life on Earth impossible with the huge amounts of X-rays emanating from it."
The new study followed up on the black hole by using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile to measure its mass.
"We knew we were onto a very massive black hole when we realized its fast growth rate," said Fuyan Bian, study coauthor and staff astronomer at the European Southern Observatory, in a statement.
"How much black holes can swallow depends on how much mass they already have. So, for this one to be devouring matter at such a high rate, we thought it could become a new record holder. And now we know."
Further study and observation of this black hole will also shed light on its host galaxy, which may reveal more information about the early universe and how massive black holes evolved early on.
"With such an enormous black hole, we're also excited to see what we can learn about the galaxy in which it's growing," Onken said. "Is this galaxy one of the behemoths of the early universe, or did the black hole just swallow up an extraordinary amount of its surroundings? We'll have to keep digging to figure that out."
30 years of photos from the Hubble telescope
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope sent back its first image from space on May 20, 1990. Here are some of the iconic images Hubble has sent back since.
Celebrating the Hubble telescope: 30 years of photos from space
Carina Nebula
Updated
In this image provided by NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team, a stellar jet in the Carina Nebula is pictured in space.
Space shuttle Atlantis
Updated
In this tightly cropped handout image provided by NASA, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit at 10:27 a.m. EDT, May 18, 2009, from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Crab Nebula
Updated
This image gives the most detailed view so far of the entire Crab Nebula ever made. The image is the largest image ever taken with Hubble's WFPC2 workhorse camera.
Seyfert's Sextet
Updated
This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a group of galaxies called the Seyfert's Sextet on June 26, 2000. Although the name of this grouping suggests that there are six, there are in reality only four galaxies in the group that are slowly merging into one.
Lagoon Nebula
Updated
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a pair of one-half-light-year-long interstellar "twisters," eerie funnels and twisted-rope structures, in the heart of the Lagoon Nebula, which lies 5,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. The central hot star, O Herschel 36 (lower right), is the primary source of the ionizing radiation for the brightest region in the nebula, called the Hourglass.
Spiral galaxy NGC 4631
Updated
An image of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope shows a halo of hot gas surrounding spiral galaxy NGC 4631 that is similar to the Milky Way galaxy, June 19, 2001. The orange color in the middle of the image represents ultraviolet radiation as observed by UIT, tracing massive stars in the galaxy.
Little Ghost Nebula
Updated
The Hubble Space Telescope took this image of a dying star named "NGC 6369" on Nov. 7, 2002. The star, also known as the "Little Ghost Nebula," is 2000 to 5000 light years from Earth and is similar in mass to our sun. The ghostly halo surrounding the star is caused by the shedding of the star's outer layers during the final stages of its life cycle.
Cone Nebula
Updated
The Cone Nebula, an innocuous pillar of gas and dust, is seen in this picture unveiled by astronomers on April 30, 2002.
Nebula IC 1396
Updated
Resembling a flaming creature on the run, this image exposes the hidden interior of a dark and dusty cloud in the emission Nebula IC 1396. Young stars previously obscured by dust can be seen here for the first time.
Cas A supernova
Updated
An image of a Cas A supernova reveals the remnants of a section of the upper rim of the youngest known supernova identified in our Milky Way galaxy. Dozens of tiny clumps near the top of the image are actually small fragments of the star, and each clump is approximately 10 times larger than the diameter of our solar system. The varying colors of the supernova are caused by glowing atoms.
Kepler's supernova
Updated
This image released Oct. 7, 2004, by NASA shows Kepler's supernova remnant produced by combining data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. Kepler's supernova was first seen 400 years ago by sky watchers, including famous astronomer Johannes Kepler. The combined image unveils a bubble-shaped shroud of gas and dust that is 14 light-years wide and is expanding at 4 million miles per hour (2,000 kilometers per second).
Whirlpool Galaxy and Eagle Nebula
Updated
In this composite handout image released from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Whirlpool Galaxy and Eagle Nebula are seen April 25, 2005.
Fomalhaut
Updated
In this handout provided by NASA, a visible-light image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a red ring of dust and debris that surrounds the star Fomalhaut and the newly discovered planet Fomalhaut b, orbiting its parent star.
Pluto and its moons
Updated
This undated image taken by the Hubble telescope shows Pluto and its moons Charon, Nix and Hydra. The International Astronomical Union announced on Aug. 24, 2006, that it no longer considered Pluto a planet, a status it had held since its discovery in 1930.
Jupiter
Updated
A curtain of glowing gas is wrapped around Jupiter's north pole like a lasso Dec. 19, 2000, in a Hubble telescope photo. The curtain of light, called an aurora, is produced when high-energy electrons race along the planet's magnetic field and into the upper atmosphere. The electrons excite atmospheric gases, causing them to glow. The aurora resembles the same phenomenon that crowns Earth's polar regions.
Radiant Star
Updated
The Radiant Star, Sept. 13, 1996.
'Eskimo' Nebula
Updated
Hubble takes a look at the "Eskimo" Nebula in this March 6, 2000, image. This stellar relic, first spied by William Herschel in 1787, was nicknamed the "Eskimo" Nebula because, when viewed through ground-based telescopes, it resembles a face surrounded by a fur parka.
NGC 1999
Updated
Just weeks after NASA astronauts repaired the Hubble Space Telescope in December 1999, the Hubble Heritage Project snapped this picture of NGC 1999, a nebula in the constellation Orion. The Heritage astronomers, in collaboration with scientists in Texas and Ireland, used Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) to obtain the color image.
Saturn
Updated
These Hubble Space Telescope images, captured from 1996 to 2000, show Saturn's rings open up from just past edge-on to nearly fully open as it moves from autumn toward winter in its Northern Hemisphere, part of the course of its 29-year journey around the sun.
Mars
Updated
A comparison image of the planet Mars reveals that a global dust storm has engulfed the planet. The storm is comprised of fine dust and obscures all surface features.
Stingray Nebula
Updated
The Stingray Nebula as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope April 2, 1998.
Supernova self-destruction
Updated
The self-destruction of supernova 1987-A(C) is shown in this composite image taken in September 1994, February 1996 and July 1997.
Hubble Space Telescope
Updated
This April 6, 1994, image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows stars that lie near the center of our galaxy some 25,000 light-years distant. But one object, the blue curved streak (upper right), is something much closer. An uncatalogued, mile-wide bit of rocky debris orbiting the sun only light-minutes away strayed into the cameras field while the image was being exposed.
Moons of Jupiter
Updated
This is a Hubble Space Telescope "family portrait" of the four largest moons of Jupiter.
Elliptical galaxy
Updated
This April 1996 image from Hubble shows the beautiful, eerie silhouette of dark dust clouds against the glowing nucleus of the elliptical galaxy NGC 1316. It may represent the aftermath of a 100 million-year-old cosmic collision between the elliptical and a smaller companion galaxy.
Mars
Updated
This image released Aug. 27, 2003, shows a close-up of the red planet Mars when it was just 34,648,840 miles away. The color image was assembled from a series of exposures. Many small, dark, circular impact craters can be seen, attesting to the Hubble telescope's ability to reveal fine detail on the planet's surface.
Hubble Space Telescope
Updated
The sun reflects off the newly installed solar panels of the Hubble Space Telescope as it sits in the cargo bay of the space shuttle Endeavour on Dec. 9, 1993.
Hubble Space Telescope
Updated
Jeff Rudolph, president of the California Science Center in Los Angeles, is photographed in front of a Hubble Space Telescope image of part of the Carina Nebula, a place in our galaxy where stars are born, at the California Science Center on Aug. 17, 2012.