Arp 284 (NGC 7714-7715)
Three Giant Leaps
Description by Brian Ottum
Three different objects in this image demonstrate the immensity of the known universe. The bright star is 16 Piscium, located just 100 light-years from Earth, within our home Milky Way galaxy.
The pair of interacting galaxies (Arp 284) are a thousand times further away than the bright star, 100 million light-years from Earth.
Finally, the tiny blue quasar's (B2333+019A) & (B2334+019A) are a hundred times further away than the pair of galaxies at 10 and 11 billion light-years from Earth.
The 3 different objects demonstrate the immense power of gravity.
1. The bright star creates light through gravity-generated fusion.
2. Gravity is pulling the pair of galaxies Arp 284 also known as (NGC 7714 and NGC 7715) toward each other, gradually tearing them apart in the process.
3. Finally, 2 separate super massive black holes have so much gravitational pull that it is vacuuming up its host galaxy, allowing only an extremely bright jet of light (the 2 quasars) to escape and be blasted towards Earth.
We are seeing light that started its journey when the universe was relatively young at just 3 billion years old.
