(Submitted March 16, 1998) Who discovered the quasar and when?
The discovery of quasars was really spread over time. Quasar is
a shortening of "quasi-stellar radio source", and they've also
been called quasi-stellar objects or QSOs. In the late 50s,
several radio sources were matched with very dim optical objects
that looked like stars, but had strange spectra with a lot of
ultraviolet excess. One of them, 3C273 had it's position very
accurately measured by C. Hazard and co-workers, using lunar
occultations. In 1962, M. Schmidt obtained a spectrum of this
"star", which showed a redshift of 0.158. This is when QSO was
coined, because this was a very distant object that was
masquerading as a star, a quasi-stellar object. This description
is paraphrased from a book, "High Energy Astrophysics", by M.S.
Longair. Also, you can see Thanks for your question! Eric
Christian and Maggie Masetti for Ask an Astrophysicist