[4][5][6] ULAS J1120+0641 (at projected comoving distance of 28.85 billion light-years[note 1]) was the first quasar discovered beyond a redshift of z = 7.

[11] The team of scientists spent years searching the UKIDSS for a quasar whose redshift was higher than 6.5.

[1] ULAS J1120+0641 has a measured redshift of 7.085, which corresponds to a comoving distance of 28.85 billion light-years from Earth.

This energy output is generated by a supermassive black hole estimated at 2+1.5−0.7×109 solar masses.

Daniel Mortlock, lead author of the paper that announced the discovery of ULAS J1120+0641, explained, "The super-massive black hole itself is dark but it has a disc of gas or dust around it that has become so hot that it will outshine an entire galaxy of stars.

"[11] The light from ULAS J1120+0641 was emitted before the end of the theoretically-predicted transition of the intergalactic medium from an electrically neutral to an ionized state (the epoch of reionization).

This is the first time scientists have seen a quasar with such a large fraction of neutral (non-ionized) hydrogen absorption in its spectrum.