Scientists say a distant galaxy’s brightness over the past few years is the result of a supermassive black hole at its heart that is swallowing star matter, according to a report.

The report, published in Astronomy and Astrophysics, notes a galaxy 300 million lightyears away from the Earth has been brightening since 2019, and the cause of the increase in light could very well be a black hole a million times the mass of our own sun, according to the Guardian.

The galaxy, SDSS1335+0728, recently doubled in the mid-infrared wavelengths, four times in the ultraviolet, and at least 10 times in X-rays, according to the report.

The report suggested the increase in light can be explained by the development of active galactic nuclei, caused by heat from matter being absorbed into the massive black hole.

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“We discovered this source at the moment it started to show these variations in luminosity,” said Paula Sanchez Saez, a staff astronomer at the European Southern Observatory headquarters in Garching, Germany, according to the report.

“It’s the first time we’ve seen this in real time,” the scientist said, though what scientists are observing of the galactic event occurred 300 million years ago.