Most outrageously luminous galaxies ever discovered by astronomers

Astronomers have observed the most outrageously luminous galaxies ever seen in the universe. These have been described as so bright that the established descriptors, such as ‘ultra’ or ‘super’ don’t even come close. Astronomers describe them as outrageously luminous. According to the lead author Kevin Harrington from University of Massachusetts Amherst, they are calling them ‘outrageously luminous’ because there is no scientific term to apply.

The team used the 50-meter diameter Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) which is considered the most sensitive instrument in the world for studying star formation located on the summit of Sierra Negra, a 15,000-foot extinct volcano in the central state of Puebla, a companion peak to Mexico's highest mountain.

The extreme brightness of these galaxies owe to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing that magnifies light passing near massive objects, as predicted by Einstein's general relativity. 

Due to which they appear about 20 times brighter than they really are. On astronomical count, astronomers call an infrared galaxy ‘ultra-luminous’ when it has a rating of about 1 trillion solar luminosities, and that rises to about 10 trillion solar luminosities at the ‘hyper-luminous’ level.

According to their analysis the galaxies’ brightness is most likely due to their amazingly high rate of star formation.