Quasars. Desk Mat

Artist's concept of Quasars. Quasars are bright, energetic regions around giant, active black holes in galactic centres. Although immensely powerful and visible across billions of light years, quasars are actually quite tiny, at least compared to an entire galaxy. Quasars span a few light years, and their inner areas casting out high-velocity winds compare roughly in size only to that of our solar system. It takes a beam of light about ten hours to cross that distance. Artist's rendering of ULAS J1120+0641, a very distant quasar powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun.