Hubble unlocks mysteries of distant quasar 3C 273
Astronomers, leveraging the unique capabilities of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, have been able to see further than ever before. They have examined a black hole powering a quasar and discovered several unusual phenomena.
According to Bin Ren from the Côte d'Azur Observatory, observations of the quasar's environment made with the Hubble Telescope reveal many "weird things". "We've got a few blobs of different sizes, and a mysterious L-shaped filamentary structure. This is all within 16,000 light-years of the black hole," Ren points out, as quoted by science.nasa.gov. According to Ren, some of these objects might be small satellite galaxies falling into the black hole.
Thanks to Hubble's observing power, we're opening a new gateway into understanding quasars. My colleagues are excited because they've never seen this much detail before — said the scientist.
Quasars consist of a massive black hole at the centre of the object, surrounded by matter that gradually falls onto it due to gravitational forces. The quasar observed by the Hubble Telescope, 3C 273, is at the centre of a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo. It was identified in 1963 by astronomer Maarten Schmidt as the first quasar.
Located 736 million parsecs away, the object was too distant to be a star, opening the door to an unexpected puzzle in cosmology: what drives such massive energy production? Accumulating matter onto the black hole was considered the likely cause.
Better than ever
Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), astronomers have been able to observe eight times closer to the black hole than ever before. By comparing STIS coronagraphic data with archival STIS images over a 22-year interval, the team led by Ren concluded that the jet moves faster when it is farther from the monstrous black hole.
Our previous view was very limited, but Hubble is allowing us to understand the complicated quasar morphology and galactic interactions in detail. In the future, looking further at 3C 273 in infrared light with the James Webb Space Telescope might give us more clues - Ren said.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operational for over three decades and continues to make groundbreaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is an international collaboration between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency).
