Astronomers have observed the brightest flare ever recorded from a supermassive black hole — a dazzling outburst that shone with the light of 10 trillion suns.

The cosmic flare, spotted in 2018 by a camera at California’s Palomar Observatory, reached its peak over three months before gradually fading in the years since. Scientists believe the burst occurred when a massive star strayed too close to the black hole and was torn apart by its immense gravitational forces.

“At first, we didn’t really believe the numbers about the energy,” said study author Matthew Graham of the California Institute of Technology, which operates the observatory.

The findings, published Tuesday in Nature Astronomy, describe a flare originating from a supermassive black hole located about 10 billion light years away — the most distant event of its kind ever observed. This means the explosion occurred when the universe was still relatively young.

Such flares can result from tangled magnetic fields or disruptions in the hot, swirling gas that forms around black holes. These outbursts give scientists valuable clues about how black holes interact with their surroundings.

“Discoveries like this allow us to probe the interaction of supermassive black holes with their environments early in the universe,” said Joseph Michail of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who was not involved in the study.

Nearly every large galaxy, including the Milky Way, harbors a supermassive black hole at its core, though researchers still do not fully understand how these colossal objects form. Studying such powerful events helps shed light on the origins and evolution of galaxies — and the universe itself.