Hubble unveils stranger-than-ever features in distant quasar
Astronomers, utilizing the unique capabilities of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, have been able to see farther than ever before. They examined a black hole powering a quasar and discovered many "weird things."
According to Bin Ren from the Côte d'Azur Observatory, observations of the environment around the quasar 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 located at the center of the object, along with matter that surrounds it and gradually spirals onto it under the influence of gravitational forces. The quasar observed by the Hubble Telescope, 3C 273, is situated at the center of a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo. It was identified in 1963 by astronomer Maarten Schmidt as the first quasar.
The quasar, located 2.4 billion light-years away, was too distant to be a star. This discovery opened the door to an unexpected new puzzle in cosmology: What drives such massive energy production? Accumulating matter onto the black hole was considered the likely culprit.
Better than ever
Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), astronomers were able to look 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 enormous 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, said Ren.
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).
