The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
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Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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A NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the core of quasar 3C 273. A coronagraph on Hubble blocks out the glare coming from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the quasar. This allows astronomers to see unprecedented details near the black hole: weird filaments, lobes, and a mysterious L-shaped structure, probably caused by small galaxies being devoured by the black hole. Located 2.5 billion light-years away, 3C 273 is the first quasar (quasi-stellar object) ever discovered, in 1963.
[Image description: This is a close-up look at the environment around quasar 3C 273 using Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) coronagraph. A black circle blocks the glare of the quasar. Blue-colored filamentary material can be seen near the black hole at the center of its host galaxy. There’s a blue-white smoke-like feature stretching to the 4 o’clock position, an extragalactic jet launched from the quasar.]