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

An X-ray image from the space-based Chandra X-Ray Observatory shows a high-speed jet of charged particles squirting away from 3c273. [NASA/CXC/SAO/H.Marshall et al.]

This document was last modified: January 13, 2011.