File:Best_image_of_bright_quasar_3C_273_(10953173335).jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Key facts
- Constellation
- Virgo
- Right ascension
- 12 29 06.7
- Declination
- +02 ° 03 ′ 09 ″
- Redshift
- 0.158339 ± 0.000067
- Distance
- 2.443 Gly (749 Mpc ) (luminosity distance), 1.80 +0.32, −0.28 Gly ( 552 +97, −79 Mpc ) (parallax distance)
- Type
- Blazar ; Sy1
- Notable features
- optically brightest quasar, first spectrum of a quasar
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- variable star
- Constellation
- Virgo
- Distance from Earth
- 657.8
- Image
- Best image of bright quasar 3C 273 (10953173335).jpg
Show 14 more facts
- redshift
- 0.173139
- catalog code
- [PUC81] 3C 273 C
- Commons category
- 3C 273
- discoverer or inventor
- Maarten Schmidt
- time of discovery or invention
- 1963-00-00
- epoch
- J2000.0
- radial velocity
- 47469
- on focus list of Wikimedia project
- Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
- right ascension
- 187.27791594049
- declination
- 2.05238823055
- apparent magnitude
- 13.242
- parallax
- 0.0108
- right ascension component of proper motion
- -0.023
- declination component of proper motion
- 0.098
via Wikidata · CC0
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
3C 273 is a quasar located at the center of a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation of Virgo. It was the first quasar ever to be identified and is the visually brightest quasar in the sky as seen from the Earth, with an apparent visual magnitude of 12.9, outshining by more than 16 times the entire galaxy that hosts it. The derived distance to this object is 749 megaparsecs (2.4 billion light-years). The mass of its central supermassive black hole is approximately 900 million times the mass of the Sun.
Observation
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “3C 273” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.