Researchers announced on Nov. 4, 2025, that they have identified the brightest supermassive black hole flare yet recorded, a burst of light comparable to the combined output of roughly 10 trillion suns that was first detected in 2018 by the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory. Analysis of the source, identified as Active Galactic Nucleus J2245+3743, indicates the event was a tidal disruption in which a star was shredded as it approached the black hole, producing an extreme and long-lived flare.
Observational records show the object brightened dramatically over a span of months, increasing in luminosity by a factor of about 40 before reaching a peak at roughly 30 times its prior brightness, and then entering a prolonged decay that has continued for years. The flare originates from a galaxy seen at a cosmological distance of around 10 billion light-years, a separation that stretches the observed light and temporal evolution through cosmological time dilation. That stretching contributes to the event’s visibility over an extended interval and underscores the value of multi-year time-domain surveys for detecting and tracking distant, rapidly evolving phenomena.
The initial detection by the Zwicky Transient Facility placed the flare on the radar of follow-up programs, which collected multi-epoch measurements documenting the rise and slow decline. The object’s classification as a tidal disruption event within an active galactic nucleus is based on the pattern of brightening and decay recorded in the archival and follow-up data; researchers conclude the disrupted star’s material accreted onto the central supermassive black hole produced the luminous outburst.
At the reported distance, the flare’s observed properties reflect both the intrinsic energetics of the tidal disruption and the effects of an expanding universe. Cosmological time dilation not only delays and stretches the light received from such remote sources, it also allows telescopes on Earth to sample the event’s evolution over timescales that, in the source frame, are shorter. Long-term monitoring campaigns like ZTF, which repeatedly scan the sky, are therefore well suited to identifying similar transient phenomena in the young universe and building light curves that capture both fast rises and extended declines.
Researchers say the flare remains observable and is expected to be detectable for a few more years, providing a continuing opportunity to study the aftermath of a star’s destruction in the environment of a supermassive black hole. Teams working on the discovery plan to expand searches through ZTF’s archival data to seek earlier or comparable events and to characterize the host galaxy and its nucleus more completely. Ground-based telescopes are expected to play a central role in follow-up observations, contributing photometry and spectroscopy as the source fades.
The astronomical community is also awaiting data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which will begin providing much deeper and wider time-domain observations when its survey commences. Rubin’s data are anticipated to increase the discovery rate of distant transients and to complement ongoing ZTF monitoring and targeted follow-up, aiding efforts to place the J2245+3743 flare in a broader statistical and physical context.
For now, the record-setting brightness of the J2245+3743 flare and its prolonged visibility offer researchers a rare, well-documented case of a tidal disruption event at great distance. Continued archival searches, coordinated ground-based observations and upcoming survey data are expected to shape analyses of the event’s evolution in the coming years.