2007-03-19 16:42:03 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
Ooooh! An excellent question!
A quasar is thought to be the active nucleus of a very young galaxy. These are the most distant objects in the universe that can be observed with a telescope...we are talking billions of light years here...getting close to the beginning of the universe, hence why they galaxies they are in are so young.
They are extremely luminous...trillions of suns worth. The brightest known quasar 3C 273, is a maginitude 12.8 ...easily seen in a modest telescope...but it looks basically like a star due to its distance...2.5 billion light years.
2007-03-19 17:06:06 · answer #1 · answered by star2_watch 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
They are thought to be the active nuclei of young galaxies. Quasars stand for QUASi-stellAR radio sources. They put out massive amounts of energy, equal to a trillion suns. There are over 100,000 known quasars. They appear to be very far away. They are thought to be powered by super massive black holes and consume the energy of 10 stars per year.
2007-03-19 23:56:00 · answer #2 · answered by misoma5 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
A quasar (contraction of QUASi-stellAR radio source) is an astronomical source of electromagnetic energy, including radio waves and visible light. As of 2007, the scientific consensus is that these objects are extremely far away (explaining their high redshift), extremely bright (explaining why they can be seen despite being so far away), and very compact (explaining why they can rapidly change brightness). They are thought to be the active nuclei of young galaxies.
You can find more info and external links here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasar
2007-03-19 23:47:20 · answer #3 · answered by TXgal 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋