AstroKids Pearl the owl Spark the fox
AstroKids › Everything in the sky › 3C 273
quasar

3C 273

First quasar proven to exist, extremely distant and powerful (1963); a supermassive black hole devouring gas.

🕒 When can I see it?🚀 Travel there

What it is

Quasar: A feeding supermassive black hole, outshining its entire galaxy. Every kind of thing there is →

How to find 3C 273

Look in the constellation Virgo.

It is best placed in the spring if you are north of the equator.

From the southern hemisphere, look in the autumn.

Visible mainly from the both half of the world.

Star-hop: Within reach of an 8-inch amateur telescope from a dark sky, appearing only as a faint star.

The Planetarium works out where it actually is from your own place and the date — including whether it is above the horizon at all tonight.

Show me 3C 273 in tonight's sky

What you will really see

Through a small telescope, on a good night

A star-like point — the trick is knowing that tiny dot is a whole galaxy's blazing heart.

Honest, not glamorous — why the pictures here are drawn.

🔭 See it drawn as it looks through a telescope

Worth knowing about 3C 273

On that same scale, 3C 273 would be about 2,400 kilometers away. Light takes 2.4 billion years to get here from 3C 273, so what you are looking at is 3C 273 as it was 2.4 billion years ago.

What it is made of
A quasar -- the blazing core of a distant galaxy powered by a supermassive black hole devouring gas, outshining its entire host galaxy.
How we know: In 1963, Maarten Schmidt realized its light was shifted so far toward red it had to be billions of light-years away. Rung 7 — the Universe
What makes it worth knowing
Discovered 1963, the object that first proved quasars exist and launched the field of quasar astronomy.
The numbers
Distance from us~2.4 billion light-years

Where it sits

It belongs to a giant elliptical galaxy -- the quasar is that galaxy's blazing core, so far away the rest of it is lost in the glare.

How anyone knows this

Nobody flew a tape measure out there. Every number on this page was worked out from the ground:

Next to it

Andromeda Galaxy (M31)spiral galaxyNaked eyeTriangulum Galaxy (M33)spiral galaxyWith effortLarge Magellanic Cloudirregular galaxyNaked eyeBode's Galaxy (M81)spiral galaxyWith effortWhirlpool Galaxy (M51)spiral galaxyWith effortSombrero Galaxy (M104)spiral galaxyWith effort

Then go outside

Clear tonight? The Planetarium will show you what is worth a look. Then just go out.

🌙 Plan an evening outside🌌 Everything else in the sky