This new false-colored image from NASA's Hubble, Chandra and Spitzer space
telescopes shows a giant jet of particles that has been shot out from the
vicinity of a type of supermassive black hole called a quasar. The jet is
enormous, stretching across more than 100,000 light-years of space -- a
size comparable to our own Milky Way galaxy!
Quasars are among the brightest objects in the universe. They consist of
supermassive black holes surrounded by turbulent material, which is being
heated up as it is dragged toward the black hole. This hot material glows
brilliantly, and some of it gets blown off into space in the form of
powerful jets.
The jet pictured here is streaming out from the first known quasar, called
3C273, discovered in 1963. A kaleidoscope of colors represents the jet's
assorted light waves. X-rays, the highest-energy light in the image, are
shown at the far left in blue (the black hole itself is well to the left
of the image). The X-rays were captured by Chandra. As you move from left
to right, the light diminishes in energy, and wavelengths increase in
size. Visible light recorded by Hubble is displayed in green, while
infrared light caught by Spitzer is red. Areas where visible and infrared
light overlap appear yellow.
