Quasar may reveal birth of galaxies

A BRIGHT beacon in space believed to be powered by a black hole may shed light on a hidden era of the early universe.

The object, named ULAS J1120+0641, is the most distant quasar known.

Quasars are incredibly bright sources of energy thought to be the hot centres of young galaxies swirling around supermassive black holes.

They can emit thousands of times more radiation than our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

The new quasar is 12.9 billion light years away, meaning its light began travelling across space when the universe was just 770 million years old.

Light rays from such distant objects are stretched by the expanding cosmos, making them redder.

Astronomers use this “redshift” to estimate the distance of very far away objects.

ULAS J1120+0641 is the first quasar discovered in the infrared part of the spectrum. It was identified by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope based at Hilo in Hawaii.

The next most distant quasar is seen as it appeared 870 million years after the Big Bang, which gave birth to the universe.

Studying ULAS J1120+0641 may help astronomers learn about the re-ionisation era, a period when the first galaxies were forming.

Dr Daniel Mortlock, from Imperial College London, said: “Finding this object required a painstaking search, but it was worth the effort to be able to unravel some of the mysteries of the early universe.”