Galactic Merger: Intense Black Hole-powered Quasar Radiation Observed | ESO
Astronomers have witnessed a violent galactic merger in deep space. Like a ‘cosmic joust’, one galaxy is affecting another with a cone of intense radiation. The results of their analysis, using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), show that this radiation is disrupting the gas and dust within the other galaxy reducing its star formation.
The source of the radiation is a quasar in one of the galaxies. Quasars are the bright cores of distant galaxies that are powered by supermassive black holes, releasing huge amounts of radiation. Quasars and galaxy mergers used to be far more common, appearing more frequently in the Universe’s first few billion years, so to observe them astronomers peer into the distant past with powerful telescopes. The light from this ‘cosmic joust’ has taken over 11 billion years to reach us, so we see it as it was when the Universe was only 18% of its current age.
Directed by: Angelos Tsaousis and Martin Wallner
Editing: Angelos Tsaousis
Written by: Amy Briggs and Sean Bromilow
Footage and photos: ESO/Luis Calçada, Cristoph Malin, Martin Kornmesser, Angelos Tsaousis, Babak Tafreshi, Jose Porte, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Balashev and P. Noterdaeme et al.
Scientific consultant: Paola Amico, Mariya Lyubenova
Duration: 2 minutes
Release Date: May 21, 2025
#NASA #ESO #Space #Astronomy #Science #Galaxies #GalacticMerger #InteractingGalaxies #Quasars #Blackholes #Universe #VLT #ParanalObservatory #Chile #Europe #RadioAstronomy #ALMA #NSF #NRAO #UnitedStates #NAOJ #Japan #日本 #STEM #Education #HD #Video
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