Word: 3c
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...would appear in that part of the spectrum where the much longer waves of visible light are normally found. So they catalogued all possible kinds of ultraviolet that might conceivably come from a quasar and looked for characteristic patterns in their faint spectrograms. At last they found a quasar, 3C-254, whose spectrum showed five clear lines. All except one of them had been identified in earlier-found quasar spectrograms; the fifth, which lay deeper in the ultraviolet, could now be identified by its relation to the other four...
Blue Birth. The confusion has increased steadily. Dr. Allen R. Sandage of Mt. Wilson and Palomar reported that a radio source, 3C-2, which was photographed as a dim reddish object only two years ago by the University of Minnesota observatory, has shown up in recent Palomar pictures four times as brilliant as before, but rich in blue light. It seems as if 3C-2 has turned into a quasar, giving a vast increase in shortwave radiation. But no one can imagine a process that could kindle such an outburst in so short a time...
After studying nearly 100 years of star photographs from the University of Heidelberg, Dr. Harlan Smith of the University of Texas reported that the light from the heavenly body known as 3C-273 pulsates regularly on a 13-year cycle. Not that pulsating starlight is rare, but 3C-273 is not a star. It is a "quasar" (quasi-stellar object) that sends out powerful radio waves as well as light and is believed to be about 1 billion light-years away from the earth. Most astronomers think it is a galaxy in the process of exploding...
...astronomers have developed several theories to explain why galaxies can explode, but the 13-year pulsation of Quasar 3C-273 has them stumped. If the thing is really a galaxy, it must be many thousand light-years in diameter; light must take at least 1,000 years to cross a minor section of it, and according to relativity theory, nothing can move faster than light...
...than normal give such meaningful information about what was happening billions of years ago in the depths of space. A dozen such galaxies have been found so far, and astronomers are confident that many more can be found by the kind of radio scouting that stirred up interest in 3C-147. The spectrum of their ancient light may tell whether the universe is still being created, and whether it has limits in either space or time...