Astronomers have used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to observe a quasar, 3C 273, in unprecedented detail. The observations reveal the environment around the quasar is filled with “weird things,” including mysterious structures and possible satellite galaxies.
Astronomer Bin Ren led the study, which used Hubble’s STIS instrument to block light from the central source of the quasar. This allowed the team to look eight times closer to the black hole than ever before. The observations show a large-scale jet of material blazing across space at nearly the speed of light.
The findings suggest that the quasar is powered by a massive black hole and provide new insights into quasars’ host galaxies. Ren’s team also discovered that the jet moves faster when it is farther away from the black hole, bridging a gap between small-scale radio interferometry and large-scale optical imaging observations.
This study marks an important step towards understanding quasars and their role in the universe. With at least 1 million quasars scattered across the sky, they are useful background “spotlights” for various astronomical observations. The team plans to use the James Webb Space Telescope in the future to gain more clues about the mysterious quasar 3C 273.
The discovery was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and provides new evidence that material accreting onto a black hole is responsible for powering quasars, which are galactic centers that glow brightly.
Source: https://phys.org/news/2024-12-hubble-closest-quasar.html