Type

Supermassive

Location

In the constellation Leo

Finder Chart

Distance

320 million light-years (98 megaparsecs)

Mass

9.7 billion times the mass of the Sun

Size

Diameter roughly 6 times the size of the orbit of Neptune

Discovery Methods

• Measuring the motions of stars

1

Hubble Space Telescope view of 3c273. [NASA/J.Bahcall (IAS)]

This document was last modified: January 13, 2011.