Hubble Space Telescope Provides Image of Collision Between Galaxies

Images from the Hubble Space Telescope have provided astronomers with their first views of the galaxies that host quasars, intensely bright quasi-stellar objects thought to be powered by a black hole at their centers. Quasars are so bright that their light has overpowered the images of galaxies in previous photos.

The pictures reveal that quasars are found in a broad variety of galaxies, including stable spiral galaxies and galaxies in collision. The photo shows a collision between two galaxies traveling at 1 million mph. The debris is fueling a quasar that is 3 billion light-years from Earth. Astronomers believe that a galaxy lunged vertically through the plane of a spiral galaxy, ripping out its core and leaving the spiral ring at the bottom of the picture.