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Amateur astronomers can observe a remarkable celestial object known as 3C 273, which is the farthest target visible through a standard backyard telescope. Shining with the light of
Amateur astronomers can observe a remarkable celestial object known as 3C 273, which is the farthest target visible through a standard backyard telescope. Shining with the light of trillions of suns, 3C 273 is more than two billion light-years away. Today we recognize it as the bright core of an active galaxy supported by a supermassive black hole consuming vast amounts of material.
But in 1963, 3C 273 was an enigma. Astronomer Marten Schmidt studied it after noticing its strong radio emission. When viewed through the most advanced telescope of the time, it looked like a star, but its light showed strange properties. The expansion of the universe has stretched its light into red wavelengths; this is a phenomenon called cosmological redshift. This placed 3C 273 a staggering 2.5 billion light-years away; This was too far for an ordinary star. Schmidt’s discovery paved the way for a new class of objects: quasars, or quasi-stellar objects. Their enormous brightness and energy output was unlike anything seen before and challenged our understanding of the cosmos.
Decades ago, in 1929, astrophysicist Sir James Jeans theorized that the bright centers of galaxies could act as “white holes”, funneling matter from another dimension into our universe. However, we now know that the truth is exactly the opposite. Quasars are powered by supermassive black holes that greedily devour the matter around them. They are part of a larger group of active galactic nuclei and are important for understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies.
Recent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have provided new insights into quasars. Hubble’s sharp image captured unusual structures, including filaments, petals and a mysterious L-shaped formation, within 16,000 light-years of black hole 3C 273. Some of these may be the remnants of small satellite galaxies that fell into the black hole, which has a mass of about 900 million suns. With at least a million quasars scattered across the sky, these bright objects remain a vital area of study. It all started with 3C 273, the first discovered quasar, which paved the way for understanding the most energetic events in the universe.
Astronomers have used the extraordinary capabilities of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to take an unprecedented look into the heart of the quasar, a bright galactic center powered by a supermassive black hole that is devouring surrounding material.
These new Hubble observations reveal intriguing and unexpected features around the quasar. Bin Ren, of the Cote d’Azur Observatory and Université de la Cote d’Azur in Nice, France, described the findings as “bizarre”, noting that several droplets of different sizes and a strange L-shaped thread-like thing were discovered. structure. All of these elements are located within 16,000 light-years of the black hole, providing a new look at the chaotic environment surrounding this energetic cosmic phenomenon.
Some of the objects may be small satellite galaxies around the black hole, thus accumulating above the central supermassive black hole, providing material to power the bright signature. “Thanks to Hubble’s observing power, we are opening up a new way to understand quasars,” Wren said. “My colleagues are excited because they have never seen this much detail before.”
Quasars are similar to stars as point sources of light in the sky (hence the name star-like object). The quasar in the new study, 3C 273, was identified as the first quasar by astronomer Marten Schmidt in 1963. It was 2.5 billion light years away, too far for a star. It was apparently more energetic than previously thought, with a luminosity 10 times brighter than the brightest giant elliptical galaxies. This opened up an unexpected new puzzle in cosmology: What is driving this massive energy production? The likely culprit was material accumulating onto the black hole.
A sharp new Hubble survey conducted in 1994 revealed that the environment around quasars is much more complex than first thought. The images show galactic collisions, where debris flows into supermassive black holes, and mergers of quasars and satellite galaxies. This reignites the giant black holes that drive quasars.
For Hubble, looking at quasar 3C 273 is like looking directly into the blinding headlights of a car and trying to spot an ant circling it. A quasar radiates thousands of times the energy of all the stars in the galaxy. 3C 273, one of the closest quasars to Earth, is located 2.5 billion light-years away. (If it were very close, a few tens of light-years away from Earth, it would appear as bright as the Sun in the sky!)
Hubble’s STIS instrument could act as a coronagraph to block light from central sources, similar to how the Moon blocks the Sun’s glare during a total solar eclipse. Astronomers have used STIS to reveal dusty disks around stars to understand the formation of planetary systems, and now they can use STIS to better understand quasar-hosting galaxies. Hubble’s coronagraph allowed astronomers to look eight times closer to a black hole than ever before.
Scientists have captured a rare image of a 300,000 light-year-long extragalactic quasar jet sparkling through space at nearly the speed of light. By comparing STIS coronagraphy data with STIS images archived 22 years apart, Wren’s team concluded that the jet was moving faster as it moved away from the monster black hole.
“Thanks to the fine spatial structures and jet motion, Hubble has bridged the gap between small-scale radio interferometry and large-scale optical imaging observations, and we can thus take an observational step towards a more complete understanding of quasar morphology. Our previous view was quite limited, but Hubble discovered the complex morphology of the quasar and the galactic “Future studies of 3C 273 in infrared light with the James Webb Space Telescope may provide further clues,” said Ren.
There are at least 1 million quasars scattered across the sky. These are useful background “spotlights” for various astronomical observations. Quasars were most common about 3 billion years after the Big Bang, when galaxy collisions were more common.
For more than three decades, the Hubble Space Telescope has been the cornerstone of astronomical discoveries that have revolutionized our understanding of the universe. A joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), Hubble orbits Earth and captures stunning images and data that advance our knowledge of cosmic events, from distant galaxies to black holes.
Source: Port Altele
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