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| | | | | | | 18 June
| The image reveals evidence of a catastrophic collision between two galaxies traveling at about 1.5 million kilometres per hour. The debris from this collision may be fuelling quasar IRAS 04505-2958, which is 3 thousand million light-years from Earth. Quasars reside in a variety of galaxies, from normal to highly disturbed. When seen through ground-based telescopes, these compact, enigmatic light sources resemble stars but are thousand of millions of light-years away and several hundred thousand million times brighter than normal stars. Astronomers believe that a quasar turns on when a massive black hole at the nucleus of a galaxy feeds on gas and stars. As the matter falls into the black hole, intense radiation is emitted. Eventually, the black hole will stop emitting radiation once it consumes all nearby matter. Then it needs debris from a collision of galaxies or another process to provide more fuel.
Credits: John Bahcall (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) Mike Disney (University of Wales) and NASA | |  |  | |
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