Astronomers have confirmed the most powerful radio galaxy ever found. TXS 2354+015 sits 12.5 billion light-years away, seen as it was when the universe was young.

The team, led by B. Balmaverde, measured its redshift at 4.946 using the Lyman break technique and optical spectroscopy. Its radio power at 500 MHz — 6.2 x 10^29 watts per hertz — beats every known high-redshift radio galaxy.

The host galaxy may weigh about 2 trillion solar masses, making it one of the brightest galaxies known. The galaxy was found through the optical dropout method, suggesting standard radio searches miss many such giants.

The discovery, published on arXiv, shows how supermassive black holes shaped the early universe. Jets from such black holes can heat gas and affect star formation across galaxies.

The team’s next step is to search for more such galaxies with deeper surveys, which could rewrite the history of how the first supermassive black holes grew. TXS 2354+015 shows the most extreme radio sources were already in place in the early universe.