Artist's Conception Of A Quasar (image)

Washington University in St. Louis

Caption

Quasars are very bright galaxies that host a supermassive black hole, one with the mass of hundreds of millions of suns. While dust and gas fall into the black hole, other particles are accelerated away from it at speeds close to the speed of light, forming jets above and below the black hole. The gamma ray emission the VERITAS ground-based telescope detected this past April was emitted high on these jets 7.6 billion years ago.

Credit

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

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