Hubble view of heart of quasar 3C 273

A NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the core of quasar 3C 273. A coronagraph on Hubble blocks out the glare coming from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the quasar. This allows astronomers to see unprecedented details near the black hole: weird filaments, lobes, and a mysterious L-shaped structure, probably caused by small galaxies being devoured by the black hole. Located 2.5 billion light-years away, 3C 273 is the first quasar (quasi-stellar object) ever discovered, in 1963.

[Image description: This is a close-up look at the environment around quasar 3C 273 using Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) coronagraph. A black circle blocks the glare of the quasar. Blue-colored filamentary material can be seen near the black hole at the center of its host galaxy. There’s a blue-white smoke-like feature stretching to the 4 o’clock position, an extragalactic jet launched from the quasar.]