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PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 4 (UPI) -- U.S. astronomers say they have discovered the first clear evidence of a binary quasar within a pair of actively merging galaxies.
Quasars are the extremely bright centers of galaxies surrounding super-massive black holes, and binary quasars are pairs of quasars bound together by gravity. Binary quasars, like other quasars, are thought to be the product of galaxy mergers. But until now, binary quasars have not been seen in galaxies that are unambiguously in the act of merging.
The discovery came from the Carnegie Institution's Magellan telescope in Chile and the images show two distinct galaxies with "tails" produced by tidal forces from their mutual gravitational attraction.
"This is really the first case in which you see two separate galaxies, both with quasars, that are clearly interacting," said Carnegie astronomer John Mulchaey.
The study that included astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Universities of Illinois and North Dakota, and the University of California-Santa Barbara, appears in the Astrophysical Journal.
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