Credit: IMAGE: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

This artist's conception shows the brilliant light of two quasars residing in the cores of two galaxies that are in the chaotic process of merging. The gravitational tug-of-war between the two galaxies stretches them, forming long tidal tails and igniting a firestorm of starbirth.

Quasars are brilliant beacons of intense light from the centers of distant galaxies. They are powered by supermassive black holes voraciously feeding on infalling matter. This feeding frenzy unleashes a torrent of radiation that can outshine the collective light of billions of stars in the host galaxy.

In a few tens of millions of years, the black holes and their galaxies will merge, and so will the quasar pair, forming an even more massive black hole. A similar sequence of events will happen a few billion years from now when our Milky Way galaxy merges with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2021/news-2021-014

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

Image Use Policy: http://hubblesite.org/copyright/