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The Question
(Submitted March 16, 1998)
Who discovered the quasar and when?
The Answer
The discovery of quasars was really spread over time. Quasar is a
shortening of "quasi-stellar radio source", and they've also been
called quasi-stellar objects or QSOs. In the late 50s, several
radio sources were matched with very dim optical objects that looked
like stars, but had strange spectra with a lot of ultraviolet excess.
One of them, 3C273 had it's position very accurately measured by C.
Hazard and co-workers, using lunar occultations. In 1962, M. Schmidt
obtained a spectrum of this "star", which showed a redshift of 0.158.
This is when QSO was coined, because this was a very distant object
that was masquerading as a star, a quasi-stellar object.
This description is paraphrased from a book, "High Energy Astrophysics",
by M.S. Longair.
Also, you can see
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/rosat/gallery/misc_3c273.html
Thanks for your question!
Eric Christian and Maggie Masetti
for Ask an Astrophysicist
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