Astronomers discover most distant ‘radio-loud’ quasar

London, March 9 : With the help of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have discovered the most distant quasar with powerful jets emitting at radio wavelengths.
The discovery of this ‘radio-loud’ quasar, published in The Astrophysical Journal, could provide important clues to help astronomers understand the early universe.
Quasars are very bright objects that lie at the centre of some galaxies and are powered by supermassive black holes.
As the black hole consumes the surrounding gas, energy is released, allowing astronomers to spot them even when they are very far away.
The newly discovered quasar, nicknamed P172+18, is so distant that light from it has travelled for about 13 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the universe was just around 780 million years old.
While more distant quasars have been discovered, this is the first time astronomers have been able to identify the telltale signatures of radio jets in a quasar this early on in the history of the universe.