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

The jet of particles from 3c273 traverses more than 100,000 light-years in this view from the Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer space telescopes. X-ray energy is shown in blue, visible light in green, and infrared in red (yellow is a combination of visible and infrared). The jet emits light in various wavelengths as subatomic particles spiral through a powerful magnetic field. The black hole itself is out of the frame, well to the left of the jet. [NASA/JPL/Yale]

This document was last modified: January 13, 2011.