Astronomers Find Most Distant Object Ever

Astronomers peering across the universe have spotted the most distant object ever observed, a quasar 26 billion light-years away, researchers said Thursday.

This quasar, confirmed as the most faraway object by scientists working with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, probably started sending its light in Earth’s direction when the universe was less than 1 billion years old, the researchers said in a statement.

The universe is thought to be about 14 billion years old now, and it is believed to have been expanding since the theoretical big bang that started it all.

Quasars are extremely bright but extremely compact objects thought to be powered by matter-sucking black holes as massive as a billion suns.

Michael Turner, a spokesman for the survey at the University of Chicago, said that the quasar is about 26 billion light-years away now but that, because of the expansion of the universe, it used to be a lot closer.

“When it emitted the light, it was only about 4 billion light-years from the space in the universe where Earth would be eventually,” Turner said in a telephone interview. “It’s only when we talk about the most distant objects that we have to take the expansion of the universe into account.”

The object was observed through data gathered by the sky survey last month, and scientists confirmed its distance last week.

An image of the distant quasar can be viewed online at https://www.sdss.org.