Astronomy
Do you ever wondered, whether all those things that twinkles in the sky are stars?
well, twinkling is not just for stars. There are some far more interesting space objects that live under the mask of a star, and you can never distinguish them from stars unless your telescope is made to detect infrared radiation.
Quasars, this is what they--good scientists :-)--named them as they are quasi-stellar radio sources.
Quasar actually is a compact object like star rather than a expanded one like galaxy, surrounding a super massive black hole that lie at the center of a super massive galaxy. This super massive black hole in fact is responsible for all the power it is exhibiting.
They are by far the most luminous, most powerful and most energetic objects in the universe.
The energy they emit is in the range of about 1000 times that of the galaxies they inhabit in. They even show the heavy red shift (if a light source accelerates away from us, it appears more and more red) from earth, and that means they are moving faster away from earth and when combined with Hubble's law (galaxies tend to move away from each other with a velocity proportional to their distance) it shows that they are very very far from earth, and if this is the case, it can also implies that they are formed much early in the universe(as they traveled a lot of distance so far)
There are some very high radiating quasars in our known universe and their radiation almost equals trillion sun's--may be that's why they stay far away or is it the other way around. :-)
There is even a possibility that our Milky Way was once a quasar(according to NASA), may be because they didn't found any quasar at its center surrounding the massive black hole ;). The question is if it was once a quasar, what happened to the galaxy it was once surrounded by?
Check the video below to know how a quasar looks like:
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Astronomy
What is a Quasar?
Do you ever wondered, whether all those things that twinkles in the sky are stars?
well, twinkling is not just for stars. There are some far more interesting space objects that live under the mask of a star, and you can never distinguish them from stars unless your telescope is made to detect infrared radiation.
Quasars, this is what they--good scientists :-)--named them as they are quasi-stellar radio sources.
Quasar actually is a compact object like star rather than a expanded one like galaxy, surrounding a super massive black hole that lie at the center of a super massive galaxy. This super massive black hole in fact is responsible for all the power it is exhibiting.
They are by far the most luminous, most powerful and most energetic objects in the universe.
The energy they emit is in the range of about 1000 times that of the galaxies they inhabit in. They even show the heavy red shift (if a light source accelerates away from us, it appears more and more red) from earth, and that means they are moving faster away from earth and when combined with Hubble's law (galaxies tend to move away from each other with a velocity proportional to their distance) it shows that they are very very far from earth, and if this is the case, it can also implies that they are formed much early in the universe(as they traveled a lot of distance so far)
There are some very high radiating quasars in our known universe and their radiation almost equals trillion sun's--may be that's why they stay far away or is it the other way around. :-)
There is even a possibility that our Milky Way was once a quasar(according to NASA), may be because they didn't found any quasar at its center surrounding the massive black hole ;). The question is if it was once a quasar, what happened to the galaxy it was once surrounded by?
Check the video below to know how a quasar looks like:
- A Supermassive Black Hole In A Dwarf Galaxy
A supermassive black hole exists in the center of our galaxy, with an incredible mass on the order of 4 million times that of the Sun. Our galaxy is not alone; most large galaxies also possess very large black holes as well. This leads to some interesting...
- A Humongous Star Explosion
The "SN 2006gy" explosion took place in the galaxy called NGC 1260, 240 million light-years away. It was 100 times more powerful than most typical supernovas, the brightest and most energetic ever recorded. It was first detected in September 2006, using...
- Galaxy That Shines With The Light Of More Than 300 Trillion Suns Discovered
NASA's WISE [Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer] telescope has discovered a remote galaxy that shines with the light of more than 300 trillion suns, making it the most luminous galaxy ever found. The galaxy, known as WISE J224607.57-052635.0...
- Top 10 Biggest Things In The Universe
Top 10 Biggest Things In The Universe 1. The Cosmic Web: Most astronomers...
- Milky Way
Milky Way Facts It?s warped. The Milky Way is a disk about 120,000 light years across , with a central bulge that has a diameter...