How do quasars get dressed?

Observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the peculiar object, the nearby quasar HE0450-2958, which is the only one for which no sign of a host galaxy has yet been detected, have led astronomers to propose that jets coming out from supermassive black holes could form galaxies, thereby explaining why the mass of black holes is larger in galaxies that contain more stars. This animation starts from the real images of the object and then shows an artist’s impression of a black hole zapping a galaxy into existence. This galaxy will finally merge with the quasar, which will then be “dressed”.