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The artist's impression shows a source of bright yellow-white light against the dark backdrop of space. Coming from the centre of the light source is a conical jet that is blue in colour. Faint, smaller galaxies are seen in the background of the image,
This artist's concept shows a "feeding," or active, supermassive black hole with a jet streaming outward at nearly the speed of light. Not all black holes have jets, but when they do, the jets can be pointed in any direction. If a jet happens to shine at Earth, the object is called a blazar.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Attribution (CC BY 4.0)