Sunday, 17 March 2013

How were Quasars discovered?

The discovery of Quasars were really spread over time. In the 1950s several radio sources were matched with very dim optical objects that looked like stars but had a strange spectra with a lot of ultraviolet excess. Ultraviolet means the electromagnetic radiations at wave lengths are shorter than the violet end of visible light. one of them, 3C 273 had it's position very accurately measured by C. Hazard and co-workers. In 1962, M. Schmidt obtained a spectrum of this "star", which showed a redshift. This is when Quasar-stellar objects were discovered because this was a very distant object that was showing as a star, a quasi-stellar object.

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