Illustration: An Early Quasar

What did the first quasars look like? The black hole in the center of the active galaxies is the nearest quasar. Gas and dust that falls toward a quasar glows bright, sometimes outglowing the entire home galaxy. The quasars that formed in the first billion years of the universe are more mysterious. Recent data has enabled an artist's impression of an early-universe quasar, centered on a massive black hole surrounded by sheets of gas and an accretion disk, and expelling a powerful jet. Quasars give us unique information about the early and intervening universe. The universe was only a few percent of its current age when the oldest quasars were seen.

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What will the Green Bank Telescope discover tonight? The largest fully-pointable single-dish radio telescope in the world is on the lower right. With a central dish larger than a football field, the GBT is nestled in the hills of West Virginia, USA, in a radio quiet zone where the use of cell phones,WiFi, and even microwave ovens are limited. Since the daytime sky is usually dark in radio waves, the GBT explores our universe during the day as well. For months, the featured image was planned to get the setting location of Orion just right. The background shot was built up during the previous night and the foreground shot was taken over a kilometer away from the GBT. The GBT is famous for mapping the unusual magnetic field in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, which is why the deep background image of Orion is fitting.