Quasars: Brightest Objects in The Universe

 

Quasars are basically AGN (active galactic nuclei), which means they are present at the center of a massive galaxy and are very bright and luminous, so much that even though they are billions of light-years far away, they still look like stars, that is why they were called quasi- or appearing like- a star.

Why are they so bright?

They are powered by supermassive black holes. The accretion disk of these black holes has a staggering amount of dust, gas, and other matter. This matter collides with each other, creating a huge amount of friction, which superheats the material to millions of degrees and hence, the radiation. Just to put into perspective the energy of quasars, if a quasar was put where Pluto is, all of earth's oceans would vaporize in less than a second, it is 27 trillion times brighter than our sun.