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How Does One Determine if Double Quasars are Interacting?

-- Sukhvinder | April 15, 2021

Question:

Recent observations show two very close by quasars at very high redshift how it can be inferred if they are merging or moving apart ?

-- Sukhvinder

Answer:

I believe that you are referring to the double quasars recently observed with the Hubble Space Telescope. One way to determine if two galaxies are interacting is to measure the velocities of the gas within each of the pair members. If those velocities are characteristic of two objects which are moving toward or away from each other, then astronomers have a pretty good indication that the two galaxies are interacting.

-- Jeff Mangum

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