A team of astronomers in Japan has detected for the first time a faint radio emission covering a giant galaxy with an active black hole at its center.
The radio emission is emitted by gas directly from the central black hole. The team expects to understand how the black hole interacts with its host galaxy by applying the same technology to other quasars.
The space object is called 3C273, a quasar located at the center of its host galaxy, at a distance of 2.4 billion light-years from Earth, and is the most studied quasar in the night sky.
A quasar, quasar, or star-like star is the nucleus of a galaxy thought to have a supermassive black hole at its center, which engulfs the surrounding material, releasing massive radiation, but 3C273 is still very bright.
The quasar was first observed in 1963 and was the first quasar ever discovered. Radio telescopes face challenges when focusing on bright objects such as 3C273.