Incredible image shows the fastest growing supermassive black hole ever detected

MEET the hungriest creature in the universe: a supermassive black hole that swallows the mass of a sun every day.

Its enormous appetite also means it's gaining weight, making it the fastest-growing black hole yet discovered.

The object, 12 billion light-years from Earth, is burning up so much matter that it is also the brightest one astronomers have found yet.

It's called a quasar – the remnants of a collapsing galaxy – and is called J0529-4351. It is 17 billion times heavier and 500 trillion times brighter than our own sun.

But the Australian astronomers who discovered it were amazed that no one had noticed it before.

Christian Wolf, astronomer at the Australian National University said: 'We have discovered the fastest growing black hole known to date.

“It has a mass of 17 billion suns and eats just over one sun per day.

“This makes it the most luminous object in the known universe.”

One said: “We already know about a million less impressive quasars.

“It has literally been staring us in the face until now.”