A quasar called MC2 1635+119 dominates the aftermath of a galactic collision in new images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Quasars are among the brightest objects in the universe, powered by super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies. Astronomers suspect that at least some quasars emerge from mergers between galaxies – this one took place 1.7 billion years ago between two large galaxies or a large and small galaxy.

The bottom right image shows shells of stars traveling outward from the galaxy center, like ripples in a pond when a stone is tossed in. The shells are the remnants of the colliding galaxies ripping apart under the pull of tidal forces. Eventually the individual shell stars will disperse throughout the new quasar-centered galaxy, over a period lasting from 100 million to a billion years.

– NASA, ESA and G. Canalizo and SPACE.com Staff

Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Canalizo (University of California, Riverside)