While the starbursting and active galaxies we’ve discussed so far are too far away to be seen in any amount of detail, they do have siblings in our modern universe that give us a taste of what these larger populations may have looked like. 

At the start of April, the good folks at NASA and ESA provided us with a new and stunning Hubble image of the active galaxy NGC 7172. This system has an incredibly bright core dominated by a disk of material that is spiraling toward the black hole’s event horizon. This disk is so dense it is able to generate its own light and even undergo some nuclear reactions. Dust that is a safe distance from that hungry supermassive black hole is backlit in this image, and star formation can be seen glowing blue along the galaxy’s edges. 

Imagine living at a time when this kind of stunning system was the norm and not the exception. That brighter time is what, we hope, maybe, JWST will show us in detail.

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NASA image release