Record-setting blazar OP 313 spotted 8 billion light-years away
Astronomers have confirmed OP 313 as the most distant blazar known, about 8 billion light-years from Earth. It is a flat-spectrum radio quasar whose supermassive black hole drives high-energy jets toward us. Follow-up observations with MAGIC and the LST-1 prototype traced its gamma rays to a period after the universe's cosmic noon.
OP 313 sits roughly eight billion light-years away, making it the farthest blazar confirmed so far. It belongs to the flat-spectrum radio quasar class, with a supermassive black hole sending a plasma jet almost directly toward Earth.
Its gamma rays were first detected in December 2023. Later work using Spain's MAGIC and the LST-1 prototype linked them to a time after cosmic noon, when star and galaxy formation had slowed. Because extragalactic background light weakens such signals, these telescopes helped probe that light's density and the blazar's brightness changes.
The confirmation of OP 313 could sharpen public interest in astronomy and support for large observatories, while giving researchers a distant laboratory for studying black holes, jets, and cosmic background light. It may also inform future telescope projects and data-analysis methods. Benefits would likely reach scientists, students, and science communicators first, with broader audiences gaining a clearer sense of how the universe evolved.