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A glimpse into the heart of a quasar

Astronomical objects called quasars have been difficult to study because of the limited spatial resolution of observations. An approach has been developed that allows the structure and dynamics of quasars to be investigated.
  1. Erin Kara

    1. Erin Kara is in the Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, Maryland 20742, USA.

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When the astronomical object 3C 273 was detected1, to most optical telescopes it looked just like a star in our Galaxy. But in 1963, astronomers discovered2,3 that the object was shining from a distance of 750 megaparsecs (2.4 billion light years). Whatever this mystery object was, it was producing more radiation than a trillion stars, from a region no bigger than the Solar System. Objects such as 3C 273 are now known as quasars and are understood to be powered by hot gas and dust feeding into a supermassive black hole through a structure called an accretion disk. Fifty-five years after that remarkable discovery, 3C 273 is back in the limelight. On page 657, the GRAVITY Collaboration4 reports observations of the spatially resolved rotation of hot gas in the quasar at distances much closer to the black hole than were previously possible.

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Nature 563, 636-637 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07538-z

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