File:Double Quasars (2021-014).tif

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Hubble Resolves Two Pairs of Quasars

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DescriptionDouble Quasars (2021-014).tif	English: Hubble Resolves Two Pairs of Quasars. These two Hubble Space Telescope images reveal two pairs of quasars that existed 10 billion years ago and reside at the hearts of merging galaxies. Each of the four quasars resides in a host galaxy. These galaxies, however, cannot be seen because they are too faint, even for Hubble. The quasars within each pair are only about 10,000 light-years apart—the closest ever seen at this cosmic epoch. Quasars are brilliant beacons of intense light from the centers of distant galaxies that can outshine their entire galaxies. They are powered by supermassive black holes voraciously feeding on infalling matter, unleashing a torrent of radiation. The quasar pair in the left-hand image is catalogued as J0749+2255; the pair on the right, as J0841+4825. The two pairs of host galaxies inhabited by each double quasar will eventually merge. The quasars will then tightly orbit each other until they eventually spiral together and coalesce, resulting in an even more massive, but solitary black hole. The image for J0749+2255 was taken Jan. 5, 2020. The J0841+4825 snapshot was taken Nov. 30, 2019. Both images were taken in visible light with Wide Field Camera 3.
Date	Taken in 2021
Source	Double Quasars
Author	IMAGE: NASA, ESA, Hsiang-Chih Hwang (JHU), Nadia Zakamska (JHU), Yue Shen (UIUC)
Other versions	PNG version

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This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA and ESA. NASA Hubble material (and ESA Hubble material prior to 2009) is copyright-free and may be freely used as in the public domain without fee, on the condition that only NASA, STScI, and/or ESA is credited as the source of the material. This license does not apply if ESA material created after 2008 or source material from other organizations is in use.
The material was created for NASA by Space Telescope Science Institute under Contract NAS5-26555, or for ESA by the Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre. Copyright statement at hubblesite.org or 2008 copyright statement at spacetelescope.org. For material created by the European Space Agency on the spacetelescope.org site since 2009, use the {{ESA-Hubble}} tag.

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Image title	Inhabitants of our Milky Way galaxy living several billion years from now will have a markedly different-looking sky overhead. Two brilliant objects, each as bright as the full Moon or brighter, will drown out the stars with their radiance. These giant blazing light bulbs are a pair of quasars, brought to life by the collision of our Milky Way with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. Quasars are ignited by monster black holes voraciously feeding on infalling matter, which unleashes a torrent of radiation. The Milky Way and Andromeda have such black holes at their hearts, which are now sleeping giants. That is, until the big bang-up. The duo will be as deadly then as it is dazzling. Blistering radiation from the quasar pair might sterilize the surfaces of planets, wiping out innumerable extraterrestrial civilizations. This tale of "death star" dueling quasars looming in the sky might seem like a scene out of a science fiction movie. But the real universe is stranger than fiction. This is actually a story that played out between pairs of galaxies that existed long ago and far away. Two quasar pairs photographed by Hubble existed 10 billion years ago, during the peak epoch of galaxy close encounters. The discovery offers a unique way to probe collisions among galaxies in the early universe that might otherwise have gone undetected. Ancient quasars are scattered all across the heavens, so finding these dynamic duos is fortuitous. Astronomers estimate only one in a thousand quasars are really double quasars.
Author	Space Telescope Science Institute Office of Public Outreach
Width	1,860 px
Height	920 px
Bits per component	8 8 8
Compression scheme	LZW
Pixel composition	RGB
Orientation	Normal
Number of components	3
Number of rows per strip	46
Horizontal resolution	72 dpi
Vertical resolution	72 dpi
Data arrangement	chunky format
Software used	Adobe Photoshop 22.2 (Macintosh)
File change date and time	15:58, 16 March 2021
Exif version	2.31
Color space	Uncalibrated

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