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Chandra: Quasar Pair Captured in Galaxy Collision

Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 12:25 am
by bystander
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2010/sdss/
Chandra: SDSS J1254+0846: 2010 Feb 03

Image
This composite image shows the effects of two galaxies caught in the act of merging. A Chandra X-ray Observatory image shows a pair of quasars in blue, located about 4.6 billion light years away, but separated on the sky by only about 70 thousand light years. These bright sources, collectively called SDSS J1254+0846, are powered by material falling onto supermassive black holes. An optical image from the Baade-Magellan telescope in Chile, in yellow, shows tidal tails - gravitational-stripped streamers of stars and gas -- fanning out from the two colliding galaxies.

This represents the first time a luminous pair of quasars has been clearly seen in an ongoing galaxy merger

Re: Chandra: Quasar Pair Captured in Galaxy Collision

Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 6:40 pm
by bystander
Merging Galaxies Create a Binary Quasar
Carnegie Institution for Science - 2010 Feb 04