The focus of this new part of NASA’s image – a photo captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2012 – is Hercules A.
The distant galaxy, also known as 3C 348, is the bright spot right in the middle of the image below. These long, gorgeous paths of red are jets of plasma that stretch for about 1.5 million light-years. It is due to the massive black hole in the center of 3C 348.
Image: NASA and Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
It is an elliptical galaxy that is about 1,000 times larger than our own Milky Way. The same goes for the black hole formed around the galaxy; it is also about 1,000 times larger than the center of the Milky Way, at about 2.5 billion solar masses. (Many galaxies are thought to have formed around supermassive black holes.)
“Emitting nearly a billion times more power in radio wavelengths than our Sun, the galaxy is one of the brightest extragalactic radio sources in the entire sky,” says Hubble’s own website about 3C 348.
Plasma jets move through space close to the speed of light. The Hubble website also points out that the bulbs, “ring-like structures” at the end of each jet, suggest that the black hole in the distant galaxy sent them out into space several times.
Always remember when you look at such photos that they are actually snapshots from the distant past. The Hubble team captured this special image in 2012, but the 3C 348 is about 2 billion light-years away. This means that, roughly speaking, a photograph taken today captures a scene from 2 billion years ago.
It is important to maintain perspective when looking at images of space. This single scene that you probably watch on a smartphone or tablet covers an unimaginable distance. And even though the photograph itself was taken almost a decade ago, the scene in the picture was played out about 2 billion years ago, at a time when the Earth was returning from a mass extinction event that preceded in significantly our history as a species.