[HIGHLIGHTS] 500 trillion times the size of our sun: scientists have identified the brightest object in the universe - voila! technology

Australian astronomers have discovered an extremely powerful quasar. The quasar is powered by a supermassive black hole that is growing at an extraordinary speed.

The mass of the black hole is about 17 billion suns, and it "swallows" an entire sun every day. The discovery of the quasar, published in Nature Astronomy, was made possible through a collaboration between researchers from the ANU, European Southern Observatory (ESO), University of Melbourne and Sorbonne University in France.