This incredibly small region, located at the center of the quasar, is powered by a supermassive black hole accreting matter. The intense gravitational forces and friction within this accretion disk heat the surrounding gas to millions of degrees, causing it to emit an enormous amount of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum.
While the quasar's core is extremely compact, the overall structure of a quasar can extend for hundreds of thousands of light-years, encompassing jets and lobes of ejected material.
