Galaxies

Hubble captures extraordinarily bright interacting galaxies AM 1214-255

Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Barth (University of California – Irvine), and J. Dalcanton (University of Washington); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

This new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows interacting galaxies known as AM 1214-255. These galaxies contain active galactic nuclei, or AGNs. An AGN is an extraordinarily luminous central region of a galaxy. Its extreme brightness is caused by matter whirling into a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s heart.

Hubble observed the galaxy closest to the center as part of an AGN survey, with the aim of compiling a dataset about nearby AGNs to be used as a resource for astronomers investigating AGN physics, black holes, host galaxy structure, and more.

Citation:
Hubble captures extraordinarily bright interacting galaxies AM 1214-255 (2023, May 4)
retrieved 4 May 2023
from https://phys.org/news/2023-05-hubble-captures-extraordinarily-bright-interacting.html

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https://phys.org/news/2023-05-hubble-captures-extraordinarily-bright-interacting.html

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