Just a few days ago, the ESA released this Hubble image of a pair of barred spiral galaxies some 350 million light years away in the process of merging, their two
galactic nuclei still separated by a massive distance but throwing out clouds of hot gas and mid-formation stars.
Although the origin of the gamma rays is
still being investigated, their discovery suggests the flaring behaviour of Cygnus X-3 is an even better analogue to that of quasars and other types of flaring galaxies known as «active
galactic nuclei» (AGN) than previously thought.