The jet blasting out of the core of quasar 3C273 is seen in optical, X-ray and radio emissions. The scale on all three images is the same. News images released this week show energy shooting out of a quasar to encounter just that kind of situation. When the jets shown in the images encounter slower-moving energy, enormously powerful knots of gas form like beads on a string. The images are expected to help scientists learn more about one of the most enigmatic objects in the sky.
Quasars are bizarre objects.
When scientists first noticed them in the 1950s and '60s, based on emissions of radio waves, they thought they were strange nearby stars. That's how they got the name quasar, which is short for quasi-stellar radio sources. Now quasars are known to be the most distant and powerful sources of energy in the universe. Scientists are only just beginning to understand the dazzling objects, and they are puzzled by the powerful jets of energy that shoot from the cores. So researchers used the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes to study quasar 3C273.