Astronomers stared deep into the heart of a hungry black hole, only to discover a jet of X-rays beaming out of it that is 60,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun.
In simple terms, quasars are black holes with bright, energetic jets of electromagnetic radiation beaming out of them from two sides as they feed on gases at the center of galaxies. The quasar imaged by the team in X-rays is known as SMSS J114447.77–430859.3 (J1144) and is the most luminous example of such an object seen in the last 9 billion years of cosmic history. Located at the heart of a galaxy around 9.6 billion light -years away from Earth and seen in the sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Hydra, this quasar is around 100,000 billion times brighter than the sun.
