Fascinating new observation…

Which brings us to the second issue: light coming from a black hole. Everyone knows that nothing can escape from a black hole, not even light, but that’s only after matter passes the “event horizon” – the ultimate one-way sign in spacetime. But as matter falls in towards this cut-off point it’s heated up by friction, radiating energy away as light, and this emission from infalling matter makes up over half of all the light detected from the distant galaxy. This is why we didn’t see it before – a little thing like a few hundred billion stars was outshone by the superheated material around the black hole.

via Giant Galaxy Surrounding the Most Distant Black Hole Ever Discovered at Edge of the Observable Universe.