Astronomers have used the extraordinary power of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to obtain an unprecedented look at the heart of a quasar, the glowing center of a galaxy powered by a supermassive black hole that devours nearby material. These new Hubble observations reveal interesting and unexpected features around quasars.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured quasar 3C273 in unprecedented detail, highlighting the complex structure and high-energy jets near its central black hole, providing a new perspective on the mechanics of quasars and their galactic environments. Source: NASA, ESA, Ren Bin (University Côte d'Azur/Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), John Bahcall (IAS), Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Amateur astronomers can observe an extraordinary object known as 3C273, the most distant object ever observed through a standard backyard telescope. 3C273 shines with the light of trillions of suns and is more than 2 billion light-years away. Today, we recognize it as the dazzling core of an active galaxy, powered by a supermassive black hole that swallows vast amounts of matter.

In 1963, however, 3C273 was still a mystery. Astronomer Maarten Schmidt studied it after noticing its powerful radio emissions. Through the most advanced telescopes of the time, it resembled a star, but its light showed strange characteristics. The expansion of the universe stretches its light to red wavelengths, a phenomenon known as cosmological redshift. This puts 3C273 a staggering 2.5 billion light-years away - too far away for an ordinary star. Schmidt's discovery introduced a new class of objects: quasars, or quasi-stellar objects. Their immense brightness and energy output have never been seen before, challenging our understanding of the universe.

Decades earlier, in 1929, astrophysicist Sir James Jeans theorized that the bright centers of galaxies might act as "white holes", transporting matter from another dimension into our universe. However, we now know that the opposite is true. Quasars are powered by supermassive black holes, which voraciously devour the surrounding material. They are part of the wider group of active galactic nuclei and are crucial to understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies.

Recent observations using the Hubble Space Telescope have provided new insights into quasars. Hubble's sharp imaging captured unusual structures within 16,000 light-years of the 3C273 black hole, including filaments, lobes and a mysterious L-shaped structure. Some of them may be the remnants of small satellite galaxies that fell into the black hole, which has a mass of nearly 900 million suns. There are at least a million quasars scattered across the sky, and these dazzling objects remain an important area of ​​study. It all started with 3C273, the first quasar ever discovered, opening the door to understanding the most energetic phenomena in the universe.

Hubble Space Telescope image of the core of quasar 3C273. The coronagraph on Hubble blocks the glare from the supermassive black hole at the center of a quasar. This allowed astronomers to see unprecedented detail near the black hole, such as strange filaments, lobes and mysterious L-shaped structures that may be caused by small galaxies swallowed by the black hole. 3C273, located 2.5 billion light-years away, was the first quasar (quasi-stellar object) discovered in 1963. Source: NASA, ESA, BinRen (University Côte d'Azur/CNRS), John Bahcall (IAS), Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Bin Ren of the Côte d'Azur Observatory and the University of the Côte d'Azur in Nice, France, described the findings as "weird." All of these features are located within 16,000 light-years of the black hole, providing new insights into the chaotic environment surrounding these high-energy cosmic phenomena.

Some of these objects may be small satellite galaxies around the black hole, so they could provide material accreted to the central supermassive black hole, powering the bright beacon. "Thanks to Hubble's observational power, we are opening new doors in understanding quasars. My colleagues are excited because they have never seen so much detail before."

Quasars appear like point sources of light in the sky (hence the name quasar). The quasar in the new study, 3C273, was confirmed as the first quasar by astronomer Maarten Schmidt in 1963. It is 2.5 billion light-years away from Earth, too far away for stars. Its energy must be beyond imagination, and its luminosity is more than 10 times brighter than the brightest giant elliptical galaxy. This opens up an unexpected new mystery in cosmology: What drives the production of such huge amounts of energy? The reason is likely the accretion of matter on the black hole.

Two images of quasar 3C273 taken by different Hubble instruments. At the top is a WFPC2 image of the 3C273. It looks like a bright white car headlight. There is a linear orange-white smog-like feature at the 4 o'clock position, which is an extragalactic jet ejected from a quasar at the center of an unseen galactic black hole. The color key below the title shows which filters were used to create the image, and the corresponding color for each filter: blue for the F450W, orange for the F606W. The compass arrow in the lower right corner shows the image's orientation in the sky; the north arrow points to 11 o'clock; the east arrow points to 8 o'clock. The scale bar in the lower left corner is labeled "182,000 light years" on "15 arc seconds". The STIS coronagraph image in the bottom panel is roughly the same as the WFPC2 image, but has a blue tint. The black circle blocks the quasar's glare. Blue filaments of material can be seen near the black hole. Extragalactic jets are still visible.

In 1994, Hubble's cutting-edge perspective revealed that the environment around quasars was far more complex than initially suspected. The image shows that galactic collisions and mergers occurred between the quasar and the companion galaxy, and layers of debris fell onto the supermassive black hole. This reignited the massive black holes that power quasars.

For Hubble, staring at quasar 3C273 is like looking directly into the glare of car headlights and trying to see an ant crawling around the edges around it. This quasar emits thousands of times the energy of all the stars in a galaxy. 3C273 is one of the closest quasars to Earth, located 2.5 billion light-years away. (If it were very close to Earth, only a few dozen light-years away, it would be as bright as the Sun in the sky!).

Hubble's STIS instrument can act as a coronagraph, blocking light from a central source, not unlike the way the moon blocks the sun's glare during a total solar eclipse. Astronomers have used STIS to uncover disks of dust around stars to understand the formation of planetary systems, and now they can use STIS to better understand the host galaxies of quasars. The Hubble Coronal Imager allows astronomers to get eight times closer to a black hole than ever before.

Scientists have gained rare insight into the quasar's 300,000 light-year-long jet of extragalactic material, which is blasting through space at nearly the speed of light. By comparing STIS coronagraph data with archived STIS images 22 years apart, a research team led by Ren Xiaoping concluded that the jet moves faster as it moves away from this monster black hole.

"With fine spatial structures and jet motions, Hubble bridges the gap between small-scale radio interference measurements and large-scale optical imaging observations, so we can take a step toward a more comprehensive understanding of the host morphology of quasars. Our previous observations were very limited, but Hubble allows us to understand complex quasar morphologies and galaxy interactions in detail. In the future, further observations of 3C273 in infrared light using the James Webb Space Telescope may give us more clues," Ren said.

There are at least a million quasars scattered across the sky. They are useful background "spotlights" for various astronomical observations. Quasars were most abundant about 3 billion years after the Big Bang, when galaxy collisions were more common.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been a cornerstone of astronomical discoveries for more than three decades, revolutionizing our understanding of the universe. A collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), Hubble orbits Earth, capturing stunning images and data that deepens our understanding of cosmic phenomena, from distant galaxies to black holes.

Managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and supported by Lockheed Martin Spaceflight in Denver, Hubble's operations are a testament to international teamwork and advanced engineering. Scientific operations of the telescope are conducted by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. Through its groundbreaking discoveries, Hubble remains an essential tool in exploring the universe and has inspired generations of scientists and enthusiasts.

Compiled from /ScitechDaily