Black holes have always had a beastly reputation for destroying everything in sight. But new research shows the mass-eating monsters may also have some motherly instincts.

Bright clumps of star formation, seen as dark areas in this false-color image of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 5135, were spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope.

"The process that makes the central black hole in a galaxy grow more massive may help trigger these bursts of significant star formation," said Nancy Levenson of Johns Hopkins University. "A starburst phase may be a common stage of development for Seyfert galaxies and quasars, two of the brightest objects astronomers have observed in the distant universe."

Quasars, or quasi-stellar radio sources, are enigmatic sources of very intense light in the distant reaches of the universe. They are thought to harbor black holes a billion times more massive than our Sun, all stuffed into an area no larger than our solar system.