The Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers their closest ever look at a well-known quasar, the bright centre of a galaxy generated by a supermassive black hole consuming cosmic material.
The quasar is known as 3C 273 and is blasting out an enormous jet of material into space at nearly the speed of light.
Here are 6 reasons why this new Hubble study is so incredible.
It's the first quasar ever discovered
3C 273 was first observed in 1963 by astronomer Maarten Schmidt, who didn't know what he was looking at, initially.
Schmidt had decided to investigate the 'star' because it was emitting very strange light.
The light was redder than it should have been, and this was caused by it being stretched by the expansion of the Universe as the photons made their journey to Earth's telescopes.
This process is known as 'redshift', and astronomers can use redshift to determine how far away celestial objects are.
What Schmidt had observed could only mean one thing: the 'star' was 2.5 billion lightyears away, which is too far for a lone star to be seen.
It was determined to be a new type of object called a 'quasar', which is the bright centre of a galaxy caused by the supermassive black hole at its centre consuming in-falling matter.
The black hole could be consuming nearby galaxies
Hubble's view of the quasar shows "weird things," says astronomer Bin Ren of the Côte d'Azur Observatory in Nice, France.
"We've got a few blobs of different sizes, and a mysterious L-shaped filamentary structure. This is all within 16,000 lightyears of the black hole."
It's thought some of these objects could be small satellite galaxies orbiting the black hole, providing material for it to feast on.
As this material falls inwards, it heats up and causes the galaxy's centre to glow brightly.
Quasar 3C 273 so bright, Hubble had to shield itself
Quasar 3C 273 produces an enormous amount of energy, to the tune of thousands of times the energy of all the stars in a galaxy.
It's so bright, Hubble had to use a coronagraph to be able to see it.
These instruments effectively block out extreme sources of light, enabling astronomers to see the regions surrounding a light source more clearly.
Coronagraphs are used to block out the centre of the Sun so solar scientists can see features protruding from the solar surface, and also to block out light from distant stars to observe exoplanets in orbit around them.
The Hubble coronagraph allowed astronomers observe the black hole eight times closer than ever before.
It's firing out material in an enormous jet
Black holes are known to shoot out jets of material into space as they feed on cosmic material.
The black hole powering quasar 3C 273 is producing a jet that's 300,000 lightyears long and travelling at nearly the speed of light.
And astronomers calculate that the jet is moving faster as it gets further away from the black hole.
Hubble has provided a unique view, and Webb could follow
"With the fine spatial structures and jet motion, Hubble bridged a gap between the small-scale radio interferometry and large-scale optical imaging observations," says Ren.
"Thus we can take an observational step towards a more complete understanding of quasar host morphology.
"Our previous view was very limited, but Hubble is allowing us to understand the complicated quasar morphology and galactic interactions in detail.
"In the future, looking further at 3C 273 in infrared light with the James Webb Space Telescope might give us more clues."
3C 273 is one in a million
Quasar 3C 273 is one of at least one million known quasars visible in the night sky.
Quasars were most abundant 3 billion years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was a more chaotic place and galaxy collisions were more common.
