Cosmic Backlighting: Distant Quasar Lights Up Galactic Halo | Video

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The heat from newborn stars creates a halo of gas around its parent galaxy. When a distant galaxy's black hole-powered light is absorbed by the gas, the Hubble Space Telescope's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) can detect it.

Credit: ESA / Hubble / Mash Mix: SPACE.com

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