Best image of bright quasar 3C 273

Esahubble_potw1346a_1024

esahubble_potw1346a November 18th, 2013

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

This image from Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) is likely the best of ancient and brilliant quasar 3C 273, which resides in a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin). Its light has taken some 2.5 billion years to reach us. Despite this great distance, it is still one of the closest quasars to our home. It was the first quasar ever to be identified, by astronomers Maarten Schmidt and Bev Oke in the early 1960s. The term quasar is an abbreviation of the phrase “quasi-stellar radio source”, as they appear to be star-like on the sky. In fact, quasars are the intensely powerful centres of distant, active galaxies, powered by a huge disc of particles surrounding a supermassive black hole. As material from this disc falls inwards, some quasars — including 3C 273  — have been observed to fire off super-fast jets into the surrounding space. In this picture, one of these jets appears as a cloudy streak, measuring some 200 000 light-years in length. Quasars are capable of emitting hundreds or even thousands of times the entire energy output of our galaxy, making them some of the most luminous and energetic objects in the entire Universe. Of these very bright objects, 3C 273 is the brightest in our skies. If it was located 30 light-years from our own planet — roughly seven times the distance between Earth and Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to us after the Sun — it would still appear as bright as the Sun in the sky.   WFPC2 was installed on Hubble during shuttle mission STS-61. It is the size of a small piano and was capable of seeing images in the visible, near-ultraviolet, and near-infrared parts of the spectrum. Editor's note (July 2024): This text was updated to correct an attribution.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://esahubble.org/images/potw1346a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Baltimore, MD, United States

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Image Details Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
3C 273
Subject - Distant Universe
Galaxy > Activity > AGN > Quasar
Esahubble_potw1346a_128
 

Position Details Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 12h 29m 6.6s
DEC = 2° 3’ 10.5”
Orientation
North is 159.6° CW
Field of View
1.2 x 1.2 arcminutes
Constellation
Virgo

Color Mapping Details Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Cyan Hubble (WFPC2) Optical (B) 450.0 nm
Orange Hubble (WFPC2) Optical (V) 606.0 nm
Spectrum_base
Cyan
Orange
Esahubble_potw1346a_1280
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ID
potw1346a
Subject Category
D.5.3.2.1  
Subject Name
3C 273
Credits
ESA/Hubble & NASA
Release Date
2013-11-18T10:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://esahubble.org/images/potw1346a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
WFPC2, WFPC2
Color Assignment
Cyan, Orange
Band
Optical, Optical
Bandpass
B, V
Central Wavelength
450, 606
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
187.277387065, 2.05292580953
Reference Dimension
705.0, 696.0
Reference Pixel
352.0, 348.0
Scale
-2.76864200256e-05, 2.76864200256e-05
Rotation
-159.5800000000003
Coordinate System Projection:
TAN
Quality
Full
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
ESA/Hubble
URL
https://esahubble.org
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
ESA Office, Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Dr
City
Baltimore
State/Province
MD
Postal Code
21218
Country
United States
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
potw1346a
Metadata Date
2013-09-17T08:36:30+02:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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