Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have found a stunning burst of star formation that beams out as much infrared light as an entire galaxy. The collision of two spiral galaxies has triggered this explosion, which is cloaked by dust that renders its stars nearly invisible in other wavelengths of light. Although bright as this is, it pales in comparison to a quasar. The brightest known quasar is 3C 273 in the constellation of Virgo. This quasar’s luminosity is about 2 trillion times that of our sun, or about 100 times that of the total light of average giant galaxies like our Milky Way. The starburst newly revealed by Spitzer stands as the most luminous ever seen taking place away from the centers, or nuclei, of merging parent galaxies. It blazes ten times brighter than the nearby Universe’s previous most famous starburst that gleams in another galactic smashup known as the Antennae Galaxy.