Astronomers have discovered the most distant quasar to date—around 100 million years younger than the previous title holder. This brilliant and rare beacon, powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun, is by far the brightest object yet found from a time when the Universe was less than 800 million years old—just a fraction of its current age.
Simon Dye, an astronomer at the University of Nottingham, says it took the team five years to locate it. Finding one so far away was an exciting surprise. “This quasar provides a unique opportunity to explore a 100 million year window of the cosmos that was previously out of reach.”
Full story at Futurity.
