"17-Billion-Sun Black Hole: The Universe's Hungriest and Brightest"

Astronomers have identified the brightest quasar ever observed, named J0529−4351, with a supermassive black hole estimated to have a mass of 17-19 billion solar masses and an accretion disk roughly seven light-years across. The quasar's extreme brightness is powered by an accretion rate just below the Eddington limit, equivalent to about a Sun's mass per day, and its variability suggests it may not be pushing the limit constantly. Researchers are intrigued by the system's extreme nature and believe it could provide insights into sustaining high accretion rates for long enough to form such extreme supermassive black holes, and they suggest using the ALMA telescope array and the Very Large Telescope to further study this unusual system.