Jets of light 100,000 billion times brighter than the sun have been captured by astronomers.
They are coming from a quasar - the most powerful objects in the universe.
The beams are at the centre of a galaxy 9.6 billion light years away - meaning we are seeing them as they were then.
They were triggered when clouds of gas fell into a supermassive black hole.
Named J1144, the quasar is much closer to Earth than other sources of the same luminosity, shedding light on the black hole and its surrounding environment.
The galaxy lies between the constellations of Centaurus and Hydra. Observations showed some gas being ejected in the form of extremely powerful winds - injecting large amounts of energy into it.
Lead author Dr Elias Kammoun, of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany, said: "We were very surprised that no prior X-ray observatory has ever observed this source despite its extreme power."
His team combined data from space-based telescopes to measure the temperature of the X-rays being emitted from the quasar.
They calculated it at around 350 million Kelvin, more than 60,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun.
The mass of the black hole at the quasar's centre is around 10 billion times the mass of the sun. It is growing at the rate of 100 solar masses per year.
Dr Kammoun said: "Similar quasars are usually found at much larger distances, so they appear much fainter, and we see them as they were when the Universe was only 2-3 billion years old.
"J1144 is a very rare source as it is so luminous and much closer to Earth, although still at a huge distance, giving us a unique glimpse of what such powerful quasars look like."
The study in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society improves understanding of the inner workings of quasars.
They outshine even the hottest burning stars - emitting vast amounts of electromagnetic radiation observable in radio, infrared, visible, ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. J1144 was initially observed in visible wavelengths in 2022 by the SkyMapper Southern Survey (SMSS).
The X-ray light varied on a time scale of a few days, which is not usually seen in quasars with black holes as large as the one residing in J1144.
The typical timescale of variability for a black hole of this size would be on the order of months or even years.
Dr Kammoun added: "A new monitoring campaign of this source will start in June this year, which may reveal more surprises from this unique source."
