Hubble captures extraordinarily bright interacting galaxies

May 4. (EUROPE PRESS) –

This new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows interacting galaxies known as AM 1214-255. These galaxies contain active galactic nuclei, or AGNs.

An AGN is an extraordinarily bright central region of a galaxy. Its extreme brightness is caused by matter spinning toward a supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy, reports NASA.

Hubble observed the nearest galaxy to the center as part of a campaign dedicated to observing AGN, with the aim of compiling a data set on nearby AGN to be used as a resource for astronomers investigating the physics of these cosmic objects, black holes, the structure of the host galaxy, among others.