Quasar - Wikipedia
WEBA quasar (/ ˈkweɪzɑːr / KWAY-zar) is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. The emission from an AGN is powered by a supermassive black hole with a mass ranging from millions to tens of billions of solar masses, surrounded by a gaseous accretion disc.
What is a quasar? - EarthSky
WEBFeb 28, 2021 · What is a quasar? The word quasar stands for quasi-stellar radio source. Quasars got that name because they looked starlike when astronomers first began to notice them in the late 1950s...
Quasar | Discovery, Structure & Evolution | Britannica
WEBAug 21, 2024 · Quasar, an astronomical object of very high luminosity found in the centres of some galaxies and powered by gas spiraling at high velocity into an extremely large black hole. The brightest quasars can outshine all of the stars in the galaxies in which they reside, which makes them visible even at.
What Is a Quasar? - Sky & Telescope
WEBSep 28, 2021 · A quasar is a supermassive black hole feeding on gas at the center of a distant galaxy. Quasar is short for quasi-stellar radio source, because astronomers first discovered quasars in 1963 as objects that looked like stars but emitted radio waves.
What we’ve learned in 60 years of studying quasars - Astronomy …
WEBNov 1, 2023 · Quasars are the very bright centres of distant galaxies that are powered by supermassive black holes. This quasar contains a black hole with a mass about one billion times that of the Sun,...
Quasars — Everything you need to know about the brightest …
WEBOct 19, 2023 · The Hubble Space Telescope's best image of 3C 273, which is the closest quasar to Earth at a distance of 2.3 billion light years. The quasar is so bright it completely outshines its host galaxy.
MIT astronomers observe elusive stellar light surrounding ancient ...
WEBMay 6, 2024 · MIT astronomers have observed the elusive starlight surrounding some of the earliest quasars in the universe. The distant signals, which trace back more than 13 billion years to the universe’s infancy, are revealing clues to how the very first black holes and galaxies evolved.
NASA's Webb to Study Quasars and Their Host Galaxies in Three ...
WEBAug 19, 2020 · Quasars—accreting supermassive black holes—are paradoxically some of the brightest objects in the universe. Astronomers widely consider the energy from quasars to be the main driver in limiting the growth of massive galaxies.
Quasar history | Astronomy.com
WEBDec 3, 2002 · The term “quasar” is short for “quasi-stellar object,” and quasars do appear starlike when viewed through a telescope. However, quasars produce more energy than a hundred supergiant galaxies...
JWST spots what could be a quasar from the early Universe - Nature
WEBAug 3, 2023 · A quasar is an extremely bright region at the centre of a galaxy, powered by a supermassive black hole. More than one million have been discovered, but only a handful are distant enough that they...