NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer has found the brightest galaxy in the known universe.
This galaxy, fondly named WISE J224607.57-052635.0, emits over 300 trillion times more light than our sun.
This new discovery is part of a category of celestial objects termed “extremely luminous infrared galaxies”, or ELIRGs.
The main source of the galaxy’s energy output is a supermassive black hole at its center. When a large black hole pulls in surrounding matter, the gravity and friction of the matter orbiting the edge of the event horizon superheats the material, causing it to release energy in the form of light. This kind of black hole, which compresses the matter around it into a luminous disk, is called a quasar.
Although quasars are not rare, the example at the center of WISE J224607.57-052635.0 is unique because of its age relative to the mass of its black hole.
Although the images we see of this quasar and its galaxy are over 12.5 billion years old, it was already sustaining a gravitational pull of billions of times the mass of our sun, even when the universe was only about one tenth of its now 13.8 billion year age.
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