Type

Supermassive

Location

In the constellation Virgo

Distance

2 billion light-years (765 megaparsecs)

Mass

Roughly 1 billion times the mass of the Sun

Size

Diameter roughly equal to the size of our solar system

Discovery Methods

• Detection of an accretion disk

A Hubble Space Telescope view of 3c273 in which the bright central region is blocked out, showing details in the galaxy that surrounds the quasar. [NASA]

This document was last modified: January 13, 2011.