A two-panel annotated image of quasar 3C 273, taken by different Hubble science instruments. The top panel is a Hubble Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) image of quasar 3C 273. It looks like a bright white car headlight. There is a linear orange-white smoke-like feature stretching to the 4 o’clock position, an extragalactic jet launched from the quasar in the center of the black hole of an unseen galaxy. The bottom panel is a Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) coronagraph image of quasar 3C 273. It looks the same as the WFPC2 image, but in shades of blue. A black circle (labeled “core light blocked”) blocks the glare of the quasar. Blue-colored filamentary material is visible near the black hole. The extragalactic jet is still visible.

Annotated Hubble Images of Quasar 3C 273

A Hubble Space Telescope image of the core of quasar 3C 273. A coronagraph on Hubble blocks out the glare coming from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the quasar. This allows astronomers to see unprecedented details near the black hole such as weird filaments, lobes, and a mysterious L-shaped structure, probably caused by small galaxies being devoured by the black hole. Located 2.5 billion light-years away, 3C 273 is the first quasar (quasi-stellar object) ever discovered, in 1963.

Credits: NASA, ESA, Bin Ren (Université Côte d’Azur/CNRS); Acknowledgment: John Bahcall (IAS); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
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Image CreditNASA, ESA, Bin Ren (Université Côte d’Azur/CNRS); Acknowledgment: John Bahcall (IAS); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
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