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

3c273

An X-ray image from the space-based Chandra X-Ray Observatory shows a high-speed jet of charged particles squirting away from 3c273.

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.

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.

Hubble Space Telescope view of 3c273.

This document was last modified: March 15, 2012.