1960's Science and Technology | Astronomy: Pulsars, Quasars, Cosmic Masers

Quasars Discovered.

One of the major discoveries of the 1960s was the quasar, short for quasi-stellar object. The first identified quasar was 3C-48. The "3C" stands for Third Cambridge Catalog of Radio Sources, a catalogue used by radio astronomers. Allan R. Sandage of Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar Observatories in California reported it at the 107th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New York in 1960. Employing two mobile ninety-foot parabolic radio antennae, Sandage used a technique called triangulation to locate the object. Thomas A. Matthaus had noted variable radio emissions from a small area and predicted a visible star there. Sandage found the object in the predicted location. But 3C-48 did not act much like a star. It was extremely hot (over one hundred thousand degrees Celsius). Sandage looked at the spectrum of the area (spectral lines tell astronomers what elements are present in and around a star). He...