Quasar

black holes · space · extreme energy · distant galaxies

Powered by black holes. Quasars get their incredible brightness from supermassive black holes at the centers of distant galaxies, each one millions to billions of times heavier than our Sun. Gas spirals into these black holes like water down a drain, heating up and releasing enormous amounts of energy.

Brighter than galaxies. The most powerful quasars shine thousands of times brighter than an entire galaxy like the Milky Way, even though they're just tiny regions around a black hole. This makes them some of the brightest objects in the entire universe.

Unbelievably far away. Quasars are so distant that their light has been traveling through space for billions of years to reach us. Looking at quasars is like looking back in time to when the universe was much younger.

Cosmic powerhouses. The energy released by a quasar comes from gas heating up to millions of degrees as it gets pulled into the black hole's grip. All that energy shoots out as radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Hard to spot at first. Quasars were once called quasi-stellar objects because early astronomers thought they looked like ordinary stars when viewed through telescopes. Only later did scientists realize they were actually extremely distant galaxies with superbright cores.