Astronomers have spotted a black hole they believe to be one of the most massive and luminous one on record, but more astonishing is that it appears to have formed relatively quickly.

According to CBS News, authors of a study published in the journal Nature say the black hole is 12 billion times the mass of our sun, but came 900 million years after the Big Bang. This supermassive black hole is also packing a punch with millions of billions times more energy than the sun.

"How can a quasar so luminous, and a black hole so massive, form so early in the history of the universe, at an era soon after the earliest stars and galaxies have just emerged?" study co-author Xiaohui Fan, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, said in a press release. "And what is the relationship between this monster black hole and its surrounding environment, including its host galaxy?

"This ultraluminous quasar with its supermassive black hole provides a unique laboratory to the study of the mass assembly and galaxy formation around the most massive black holes in the early universe."

At 12.8 billion light years from Earth, the supermassive black hole, dubbed SDSS J0100+2802, is as bright as 420 trillion suns.

"Many astronomers didn't expect something so massive could exist so early in the universe," Fan told CBS News. "Black holes take time to grow.

"It starts from a seed and grows over time. Then slowly, over time it accrues material to make it bigger and bigger. This is one is a giant but more like a baby in age."

Study lead author Feige Wang, a doctoral student from Peking University, first noticed the quasar that was housing SDSS J0100+2802 and picked it for deeper examination.

"This quasar was first discovered by our 2.4-meter Lijiang Telescope in Yunnan, China, making it the only quasar ever discovered by a 2-meter telescope at such distance, and we're very proud of it," Wang said in the release. "The ultraluminous nature of this quasar will allow us to make unprecedented measurements of the temperature, ionization state and metal content of the intergalactic medium at the epoch of reionization."