NASA’s Webb Telescope Spots Galaxies Merging Around ‘Monster’ Black Hole
Now that we have a powerful lens pointed toward the deepest regions of the universe at all times, our definition of “surprise” has slightly altered when it comes to astronomy pics.
It’s no longer surprising, really, when NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals yet another brilliant, ancient piece of the cosmos. At this point, we know to expect nothing less from the trailblazing machine.
Instead, whenever the telescope sends back a jaw-dropping space image, it now elicits more of a “JWST strikes again” feeling. And still, our jaws legitimately drop every single time.
This sort of dissonant version of “surprise” has happened yet again — to a pretty extreme degree. Last week, scientists presented the JWST’s brilliant view of a galaxy cluster merging around a massive black hole that houses a rare quasar — aka an incomprehensibly bright jet of light spwing from the void’s chaotic center.
There’s a lot going on here, I know. But the team behind the find thinks it could escalate even further.
“We think something dramatic is about to happen in these systems,” Andrey Vayner, a Johns Hopkins astronomer and co-author of a study about the scene soon to be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, said in a statement. For now, you can check out a detailed outline of the discovery in a paper published on arXiv.
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An artist’s concept of a galaxy with a brilliant quasar at its center.
NASA, ESA and J. Olmsted (STScI)
Especially fascinating about this portrait