Galactic Afterburner Quasars, aka quasi-stellar radio sources, are incredibly energetic, luminous, and distant active galactic nuclei. These star-like objects are sources of X-ray and visible light, and outshine several galaxies combined. It wasnât until the 1950âs that astronomers realized these extra-galactic bodies were actually producing vast quantities of radio energy; leading to the name âQuasi-stellar radio sourcesâ or quasars for short. At the center of every quasar is a black hole from which it derives its power. The higher the rate at which the black hole devours matter and the more mass it has, the more powerful the quasar. Supermassive black holes do not devour all the material that gets sucked in. Most of the material falls toward the black hole, but some of it escapes and explodes outward in the form of a jet. Similar to the afterburners on fighter jets, these galactic jets move at speeds close to the speed of light.










