Very high energy gamma-ray emission from a radio galaxy

Giant elliptical galaxies, the oldest known large galactic structures in the universe, have no spiral arms and little or no current star formation activity, but their central supermassive black holes are often active galactic nuclei (AGN). While nearly all galaxies host a supermassive black hole in their nuclei, most nuclei are not AGN. Astronomers think that giant ellipticals formed in the early universe, less than a billion years after the big bang, after a phase of rapid star-formation, and t...