How quasars got their name

By Dr. Becky

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When quasars were first discovered, we didn’t really know what they were and called them “Quasi-stellar object” and that was smushed together to make quasar - sometimes you’ll see that written as “QSO” So “quasi-stellar” meant they kind of looked like stars in images, but when you took a spectrum it didn’t look anything like what we see for stars. And eventually thanks to the launch of Hubble in the 1990s, that we realised what quasars are, because it was powerful enough to resolve the galaxies that the quasars were in the centre of. Before that, the quasar was bright enough that it drowned out the entire galaxy of stars. That’s because quasars are growing supermassive black holes, the matter that’s spiralling around it will eventually get trapped inside the black hole and make it heavier. And that material is moving so fast that it gets incredibly hot and it glows in visible, UV, infrared and X-ray light. Radiation essentially, that if you’re anywhere near will be absolutely fa

Tags: dr beccy, astronomie, physiks, kwasars