Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Olmsted (STScI)

This is an artist’s concept of a galaxy with a brilliant quasar at its center. A quasar is a very bright, distant and active supermassive black hole that is millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun. Among the brightest objects in the universe, a quasar’s light outshines that of all the stars in its host galaxy combined. Quasars feed on infalling matter and unleash torrents of winds and radiation, shaping the galaxies in which they reside. Using the unique capabilities of Webb, scientists will study six of the most distant and luminous quasars in the universe.

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2021/news-2021-026

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

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