Young active galaxy, illustration

Illustration of TXS 0128+554, a young active galaxy. The galaxy is located 500 million light years away from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. An active galaxy is a galaxy that emits more energy than all of its stars combined. In 2015, scientists using NASA's Fermi telescope discovered the active galaxy was a source of gamma rays. TXS 0128 was observed further using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The galaxy was discovered to have a supermassive black hole at its centre, surrounded by a disk (yellow) of dust and gas. This black hole produces a pair of jets whose particles travel near the speed as light. Scientists believe that the gamma rays (purple) were released when the jets collided with material surrounding the galaxy. This caused a pair of identical lobes (orange), seen at radio wavelengths, to form. Astronomers noticed that the overall shape of the active galaxy resembled Darth Vader's TIE fighter spacecraft from the fictional Star Wars universe., by NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY