Don’t peek at the answer until you’ve given this a good try! Then, scroll down a bit and the truth will be revealed to you.
Yes, it’s a galaxy . . . spiral galaxy NGC 4319 to be exact. But what else? Did you happen to notice the bright fuzzy object at the upper right in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image? That piece of extragalactic lint is a quasar called Markarian 205. And though the galaxy and the quasar appear to be neighbors, appearances can be deceiving. In reality, the two objects don’t even live in the same city. They are separated by time and space. NGC 4319 is 80 million light-years from Earth. Markarian 205 is more than 14 times farther away, residing 1 billion light-years from Earth. The apparent close alignment of Mrk 205 and NGC 4319 is simply a matter of chance.
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