NASA’s Hubble space telescope spots quasar tsunamis ripping across galaxies

Quasars, biggest and distant bright objects in space that are similar to stars. Astronomers called them "quasi-stellar radio sources," or "quasars," because the signals came from one place, like a star. However, the name is a misnomer; according to the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, only about 10 percent of quasars emit strong radio waves.
NASA’s Hubble space telescope spots quasar tsunamis ripping across galaxies. Quasars give off more energy than 100 normal galaxies combined. Because they are so far away from us, it takes billions of years for the light they give off to reach Earth. The light stays the same, it just has to travel a long time to get to us. When we look at a quasar, it is like we are looking back in time. The light we see today is what the quasar looked like billions of years ago. NASA’s Hubble space telescope has helped astronomers spot quasar tsunamis ripping across galaxies. Quasars are extremely remote celestial objects, emitting exceptionally large amounts of energy. Quasars contain supermassive black holes fueled by infalling matter that can shine 1,000 times brighter than their host galaxies of hundreds of billions of stars, no other phenomena carry more mechanical energy, these outflows produce a million times more energy than a gamma-ray burst," explained principal investigator of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. "The winds are pushing hundreds of solar masses of material each year. The amount of mechanical energy that these outflows carry is up to several hundreds of times higher than the luminosity of the entire Milky Way galaxy."
The team also includes graduate student and postdoctoral researcher of Virginia Tech, as well as the Space Telescope Science Institute. The findings were published in a series of six papers in March 2020, as a focus issue of The Astrophysical Journal Supplements.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.
Last Updated: March 20, 2020, FROM NASA SOURCE



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