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024518

This false-colour image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows a distant galaxy (yellow) that houses a quasar, a super-massive black hole circled by a ring, or torus, of gas and dust. Spitzer's infrared eyes cut through the dust to find this hidden object, which appears to be a member of the long-sought population of missing quasars. The green and blue splotches are galaxies that do not hold quasars. In this image, infrared data from Spitzer is coloured both blue (3.6 microns) and green (24 microns), and radio data from the Very Large Array telescope is coloured red. The quasar-bearing galaxy stands out in yellow because it emits both infrared and radio light.

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024518.jpg
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Irish Photo Archive
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4200x4202 / 2.7MB
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This false-colour image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows a distant galaxy (yellow) that houses a quasar, a super-massive black hole circled by a ring, or torus, of gas and dust. Spitzer's infrared eyes cut through the dust to find this hidden object, which appears to be a member of the long-sought population of missing quasars. The green and blue splotches are galaxies that do not hold quasars. In this image, infrared data from Spitzer is coloured both blue (3.6 microns) and green (24 microns), and radio data from the Very Large Array telescope is coloured red. The quasar-bearing galaxy stands out in yellow because it emits both infrared and radio light.