Active Galactic Nucleus

This is a conceptual image of an AGN - an Active Galactic Nucleus, the most luminous type of object in the universe. They only existed when the universe was young and their light has traveled for billions of years to reach us. Their immense radiation is most likely coming from the friction created by disks of rotating matter spiraling into the the supermassive black hole in the center of ancient galaxies. The center of these galaxies shine thousands of times brighter than our entire Milky Way galaxy.  Due to the conservation of momentum, giant jets are ejected from the poles of the object.

Noone really knows how an AGN actually looks for real (they are so distant that even our most powerful telescope cannot distinguish any features of them). So this is (of course) just my artist's impression. In my take there is also a smaller galaxy gradually merging with the larger galaxy. I did this for an astronomer colleague of mine who is working on this type of objects. As such I release this under a Creative Commons license.

Krita, with a touch of GIMP, a few hours.
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Griatch