3C 273
Apart from a couple of quite bright galaxies at right, this area of the night sky in the constellation Virgo looks fairly unremarkable. But at centre, indistinguishable from a star visually, lies the first quasar to have been discovered, 3C 273. The stars in the image are typically some hundreds of light years from the Solar System, and the bright galaxies millions of light years distant, but 3C 273 lies at the immense distance of more than two billion light years. Click on the image to toggle a key showing its location. Click here for a fullscreen version.
Below: a cropped detail from the above image, with 3C 273 at centre. The quasar shines at magnitude 12.9.
Below: A detail from the wide-field image at top showing the two spiral galaxies NGC 4536 (top) and NGC 4527 (bottom). Click on the image to enlarge.
11-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope; dedicated astro camera.
