PHL 1222: an Interacting Quasar Pair?

The "By-Product" of a Survey: The origin of quasars and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) is one of the outstanding problems of modern extragalactic astronomy. Mergers and gravitational interactions between galaxies are probably more frequent at large redshifts, and may lead to the appearance of quasars and other AGN. As a matter of fact, there is now an increasing body of evidence - from observations and computer simulations - that gravitational interactions between galaxies may be somehow responsible for the onset and fueling of the nuclear activity (e.g., Hernquist 1989, and references therein).