While we were gorging on delicious food and contend with relatives , Hubble produce some of thefinest observationsof galaxy IRAS 16399 - 0937 .

This object , which is turn up 370 million unaccented - years from the Milky Way , is a maser , a sort of natural optical maser , where the light expelling is evident not in seeable lighting but in microwave ( thus the ' m ' in maser ) . IRAS 16399 is not just your even maser , it ’s a megamaser   –   100 million prison term bright than the masers found in galaxies like the Milky Way !

Lasers work on the principle of stimulating faint emissions at a specific frequency from a particular gas , and likewise , some astronomic gas cloud have the right condition to produce microwaves , just like this target , again all at the same frequency .

The Hubble observation provides a crystal clear view of this galaxy . The object is particularly shaped because it ’s   the product of a hit of two beetleweed of roughly the same tidy sum . This Galax urceolata uniting is not only responsible for for the curious structure of the wandflower , but also for the activities in the two brilliant cores seeable in the space telescope image .

The N kernel , IRAS 16399N , is known as a LINER , Low - Ionization Nuclear Emission Region , an almost quiet area by galactic standards . On the other ending , the south core , IRAS 16399S is in   full baseball swing with new whizz shape at a rate of dozens , if not hundreds , of time higher than the Milky Way .

But do n’t lease this conflict in activity fool you . The real kicker hide in IRAS 16399N , where a supermassive black hole 100 million times the mass of our Sun pelt in wait border by gas . IRAS 16399N and IRAS 16399S are 11,000 easy - years aside , but   they are make close and closer to each other .

finally , the two cores will merge and the supermassive black hole will wake up . When that happens in a few hundred million year , powerful super acid will heat up the galaxy and choke   any novel star organization . But for now , and for many years to come , we can enjoy this breathtaking picture of this incredible beetleweed .