Quasar: This is the brightest thing in the entire universe

You probably know that. On days when the sun shines brightly and makes everything glow, you can’t help but squint. You should never look directly at the sun anyway – following all, this celestial body is so bright that it might damage your eyes. But our sun is far from the brightest thing in the universe.

Much brighter than the sun

Researchers have now discovered what is probably the brightest object in space – the so-called quasar (pronounced: kasar). This quasar shines approximately 500 trillion times brighter than our Sun. This is so much that we can’t even imagine.

The object was actually discovered 40 years ago. However, back then people still thought that it was simply a very, very bright star. No wonder you mightn’t immediately tell what it was. In photos, the quasar can only be seen as a tiny dot.

Holes and hurricanes

But what is a quasar anyway? This is what the luminous core of a galaxy is called. A galaxy is a collection of many solar systems. And so a galaxy is incredibly big. There are countless of them in the vastness of space.

Researchers think there is a black hole in the center of the quasar. There is something like a huge hurricane all around. The quasar is also growing. And pretty quickly. He keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Quasar: pretty voracious

The quasar is also quite “voracious” – it swallows suns. And not so few: it is estimated that it devours around 370 suns per year. That would mean around one sun per day. But don’t worry – our sun won’t be swallowed up any time soon. We are far too far away for that.