Galaxy 3C321 in constellation Serpens is blasting its nearby neighbor with with a jet of high energy Xray and gamma rays from a supermassive black hole. Upper atmospheres of planets in path of the the jet most likely have been severly damaged. A bright spot on the VLA and Merlin images shows where the jet's energy struck the side of the smaller companion galaxy about a million years ago. A real galaxy war? Of course not, but the event gives astronomers an opportunity to study some the properties of high energy jets emanating from black holes. The discovery of the "Death Star Galaxy" was made possible through the combined efforts of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Very Large Array (VLA) in Socorro, N.M., and the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) . For more information see http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/37/full/
Image credit NASA/CXC/SAO
