Brightest Galaxy Yet Shines With Light of 300 Trillion Suns

Even in a cosmos that contains 100 billion galaxies or more, one of them has to be the brightest, and astronomers may have found a winner.

The newly identified galaxy, WISE J224607.57-052635.0, lurks at the very edge of the visible universe and shines with as much light as more than 300 trillion sunlike stars.

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Being found by WISE means that it’s very red, which means that it’s either very distant, on the edge of the observable universe, or shrouded in a lot of dust. Both seen to be true in this case.

What surprises me most is that the most distant galaxies all tend to be very small, much smaller than the Milky Way. I don’t understand how this one grew so big so quickly.

mollwollfumble said:

Being found by WISE means that it’s very red, which means that it’s either very distant, on the edge of the observable universe, or shrouded in a lot of dust. Both seen to be true in this case.

What surprises me most is that the most distant galaxies all tend to be very small, much smaller than the Milky Way. I don’t understand how this one grew so big so quickly.

Early merging of two or more galaxies perhaps