03/21/2014 12:00 PM EDT
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This new Hubble image is centered on NGC 5793, a spiral galaxy over
150 million light-years away in the constellation of Libra. This galaxy has two particularly
striking features: a beautiful dust lane and an intensely bright center — much brighter than
that of our own galaxy, or indeed those of most spiral galaxies we observe. NGC 5793 is a
Seyfert galaxy. These galaxies have incredibly luminous centers that are thought to be
caused by hungry supermassive black holes — black holes that can be billions of times
the size of the sun — that pull in and devour gas and dust from their surroundings. This
galaxy is of great interest to astronomers for many reasons. For one, it appears to house
objects known as masers. Whereas lasers emit visible light, masers emit microwave
radiation. The term "masers" comes from the acronym Microwave Amplification by
Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Maser emission is caused by particles that absorb
energy from their surroundings and then re-emit this in the microwave part of the spectrum.
Naturally occurring masers, like those observed in NGC 5793, can tell us a lot about their
environment; we see these kinds of masers in areas where stars are forming. In NGC 5793 there
are also intense mega-masers, which are thousands of times more luminous than the sun.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Perlman (Florida Institute of Technology)
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