The pair of merging galaxies known as UGC 4211

The pair of merging galaxies known as UGC 4211 are harboring one big secret: a pair of black holes that are dining together, gobbling up the gas and dust around them. Scientists found and confirmed the existence of the pair— which are just 750 light-years apart— with observations from multiple research projects and telescopes: the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECalS) on the Blanco 4 meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the Keck Observatory, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Observing the galaxies in multiple wavelengths helped scientists to see that there was more than a merger going on between the pair.
Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), M. Koss et al (Eureka Scientific)