At a distance of 2 billion light years from our home there is the most powerful and deadliest object in our entire Universe. A quasar is a dazzling beam of energy that spans several billion kilometers. Scientists cannot fully study this object.

What is a quasar
Today, astronomers around the world are trying to study quasars, their origin and principle of operation. Numerous studies prove that a quasar is a huge, endlessly moving cauldron of deadly gas. The object's most powerful source of energy is located inside, in the very heart of the quasar. This is a huge black hole. A quasar weighs as much as billions of suns. The quasar absorbs everything that gets in its way. A black hole shatters entire stars and galaxies, sucking them into itself until they are completely erased and dissolved into it. Today, a quasar is the worst thing that can exist in the Universe.

Deep space objects
Quasars are the most distant and brightest objects in the Universe studied by mankind. In the 60s of the last century, scientists considered them radio stars, because they were discovered using the strongest source of radio waves. The term "quasar" comes from the phrase "quasi-stellar radio source." You can also find the name QSOs in numerous works of scientists about space. As the power of optical radio telescopes became much greater, astronomers discovered that a quasar is not a star, but a star-shaped object unknown to science.

It is assumed that the radio emission does not come from the quasar itself, but from the rays that surround it. Quasars are still one of the most mysterious objects that are located far beyond the boundaries of the Galaxy. Today, few people can talk about quasars. What it is and how these celestial bodies work can only be answered by the most experienced astronomers and scientists. The only thing that has been definitely proven is that quasars emit enormous amounts of energy. It is equal to that emitted by 3 million suns! Some quasars emit 100 times more energy than all the stars in our Galaxy combined. Interestingly, the quasar produces all of the above over an area approximately the size of the solar system.

Radiation and magnitude of quasars
Traces of previous galaxies have been found around quasars. They were recognized as redshifted objects that emit electromagnetic radiation along with radio waves and invisible light, and have very small angular dimensions. Before the discovery of quasars, these factors did not make it possible to distinguish their stars - point sources. On the contrary, extended sources are more likely to correspond to the shape of galaxies. For comparison, the average magnitude coefficient of the brightest quasar is 12.6, and the average magnitude of the brightest star is 1.45.

Where are the mysterious celestial objects located?
Black holes, pulsars and quasars are quite far from us. They are the most distant celestial bodies in the Universe. Quasars have the greatest infrared radiation. Using spectral analysis, astronomers are able to determine the speed of movement of various objects, the distance between them and to them from the Earth.

If the quasar's radiation turns red, it means it is moving away from Earth. The greater the redness, the further away the quasar is from us and its speed increases. All types of quasars move at very high speeds, which in turn change endlessly. It has been proven that the speed of quasars reaches 240 thousand km/sec, which is almost 80% of the speed of light!

We won't see modern quasars
Since these are the most distant objects from us, today we observe their movements that occurred billions of years ago. Since the light only managed to reach our Earth. Most likely, the most distant, and therefore the most ancient, are quasars. Space allows us to see them as they only appeared about 10 billion years ago. It can be assumed that some of them have ceased to exist today.

What are quasars
Although this phenomenon has not been studied enough, according to preliminary data, a quasar is a huge black hole. Its matter accelerates as the hole's vortex sucks in matter, causing these particles to heat up, rub against each other, and cause the total mass of matter to move endlessly. The speed of the quasar molecules becomes faster every second, and the temperature gets higher. The strong friction of particles causes the release of huge amounts of light and other types of radiation, such as x-rays. Every year, black holes can absorb the mass of one of our Sun. As soon as the mass drawn into the death funnel is absorbed, the released energy will spread out as radiation in two directions: along the south and north poles of the quasar. Astronomers call this unusual phenomenon a “spaceplane.”

Recent observations by astronomers show that these celestial objects are mainly located in the center of elliptical galaxies. According to one theory of the origin of quasars, they represent a young galaxy in which a massive black hole absorbs the matter surrounding it. The founders of the theory say that the source of radiation is the accretion disk of this hole. It is located in the center of the galaxy, and from this it follows that the spectral red shift of quasars is greater than the cosmological one by exactly the amount of gravitational shift. This was previously predicted by Einstein in his general theory of relativity.

Quasars are often compared to the beacons of the Universe. They can be seen from the longest distances, thanks to them their evolution and structure are studied. With the help of a “celestial beacon” they study the distribution of any substance along the line of sight. Namely: the strongest spectral absorption lines of hydrogen are transformed into lines along the absorption redshift.

Versions of scientists about quasars
There is another scheme. A quasar, according to some scientists, is a young galaxy in the making. The evolution of galaxies is little studied, since humanity is much younger than them. Perhaps quasars are an early state of galaxy formation. It can be assumed that the release of their energy comes from the youngest nuclei of active new galaxies.

Other astronomers even consider quasars to be points in space where new matter in the Universe originates. Their hypothesis proves the exact opposite of a black hole. Humanity will need a lot of time to study the stigmata of quasars.

Famous quasars
The first quasar to be discovered was discovered by Matthews and Sandage in 1960. It was located in the constellation Virgo. Most likely, it is associated with 16 stars of this constellation. After three years, Matthews noticed that the object had a huge spectral redshift. The only factor proving that it was not a star was its release of a large amount of energy in a relatively small area of ​​​​space.

Observations of humanity
The history of quasars began with the study and measurement of the visible angular sizes of radioactive sources using a special program.

In 1963, there were already about 5 quasars. In the same year, Dutch astronomers proved the spectral shift of lines towards the red spectrum. They proved that this was due to cosmological displacement as a result of their removal, so the distance could be calculated using Hubble's law. Almost immediately, two more scientists, Yu. Efremov and A. Sharov, discovered the variability of the brightness of the discovered quasars. Thanks to photometric images, they established that the variability has a periodicity of only a few days.

One of the closest quasars to us (3C 273) has a redshift and brightness corresponding to a distance of approximately 3 billion. light years. The most distant celestial objects are hundreds of times brighter than ordinary galaxies. They can be easily detected using modern radio telescopes at a distance of 12 billion light years or more. A new quasar was recently detected at a distance of 13.5 billion light years from Earth.

It is difficult to calculate exactly how many quasars have been discovered to date. This is due both to the constant discovery of new objects and to the lack of a clear boundary between active galaxies and quasars. In 1987, a list of registered quasars was published in the amount of 3594, in 2005 there were more than 195 thousand, and today their number has exceeded 200 thousand.

Initially, the term “quasar” denoted a certain class of objects that, in the visible (optical) range, are very similar to a star. But they have a number of differences: very strong radio emission and small angular dimensions (< 10).

This initial idea of ​​these bodies developed at the time of their discoveries. And this is still true, but scientists have also recognized radio-quiet quasars. They don't create as much radiation. As of 2015, about 90% of all known objects were registered.

Today, the stigmata of quasars are determined by the red shift of the spectrum. If a body is discovered in space that has a similar displacement and releases a powerful flow of energy, then it has every chance of being called a “quasar.”

Conclusion
Today, astronomers count about two thousand such celestial bodies. The main instrument for studying quasars is the Hubble Space Telescope. Since the technological progress of mankind cannot but delight us with its successes, we can assume that in the future we will solve the riddle of what a quasar and a black hole are. Perhaps they are a kind of “garbage box” that absorbs all unnecessary objects, or maybe they are the centers and energy of the Universe.

The vastness of the Universe never ceases to amaze earthly observers with the variety of mysterious objects, and quasars became one of the incredible discoveries of cosmology of the past century.

These brilliant objects emit the most significant amounts of energy found in the Universe. Being at a colossal distance from the Earth, they demonstrate greater brightness than cosmic bodies located 1000 times closer. According to the modern definition, a quasar is the active nucleus of a galaxy, where processes occur that release a huge amount of energy. The term itself means “star-like radio source.” It is because of the electromagnetic radiation and significant red shift that the discovered objects were identified as new, located on the boundaries of the universe.

Infrared image of a Quasar in tandem with a nascent starburst galaxy

Quasars emit 100 times more energy than the sum of all the stars in our galaxy. Most quasars and us are separated by 10 billion light years, and their light that reached the Earth was sent even before the process of its formation. Initially, it was assumed that all pseudostars are powerful sources of radio emission, but by 2004 it became known that, it turns out, there are very few of them - about 10%, while the rest are considered radio quiet.

History of discovery

3C 273 is a quasar in the constellation Virgo. It is believed to be the first astronomical object identified as a quasar.

The first quasar was noticed by American astronomers A. Sandage and T. Matthews, who were observing stars at a California observatory. In 1963, M. Schmidt, using a reflector telescope that collected electromagnetic radiation at one point, discovered a deviation in the spectrum of the observed object towards the red, which determined that its source was moving away from our system. Subsequent studies showed that the celestial body, recorded as 3C 273, is located at a distance of 3 billion light years. years and is receding at a tremendous speed - 240,000 km/s. Moscow scientists Sharov and Efremov studied the available early photographs of the object and found that it repeatedly changed its brightness. Irregular changes in brightness intensity suggest a small source size.

Structure and theory of origin

Quasars and the process by which their powerful radiation arises are still not fully understood. Several versions are being considered to explain what they essentially are.

Most astrophysicists tend to assume that this is a giant-scale black hole, absorbing surrounding matter. Under the influence of attraction, the particles gain enormous speed, bump into each other and hit, their temperature increases as a result, and a visible glow appears. The irresistible attraction of the black hole's energy forces matter to move towards the center in a spiral and turn into an accretion disk - a structure that arises when orbiting particles fall onto a massive cosmic body. The magnetic induction of a black hole sends some of the matter to the poles, where jets are created - narrow beams that emit radio waves. At the edges of the accretion disk, the temperature decreases and the wavelength increases to the infrared spectrum.

Another hypothesis considers quasars to be young galaxies during the period of their formation. There is an option that combines two versions, according to which the black hole absorbs the nascent matter of the galaxy. The number of quasars found by 2005 was 195,000, but this process is continuous, new objects are constantly being discovered.

Unusual properties

The Hubble Space Telescope image shows the most distant quasar (outlined in white), appearing less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang.

Quasar activity varies in all ranges: infrared and ultraviolet waves, visible light, X-rays, radio waves. Its energy is 1 million times greater than that of any discovered star. Variations in the object's luminosity occur over different periods of time - from a year to a week. Such fluctuations are typical for cosmic bodies whose size is within the boundaries of a light year.

Quasar QSO-160 913 + 653 228 located in this cluster of galaxies photographed by the Hubble telescope is distant from us at a distance of 9 billion light years. years!

The letter z (redshift) is used to indicate the degree of reddening of quasar light. In the early 1980s, several exceptionally distant celestial objects were found with a z value of 4.0. Their radio signal started before the birth of our galaxy. A quasar was recently spotted with an offset of z = 6.42, i.e., the distance to it is more than 13 billion light years. The energy emitted by a small pseudostar could provide the Earth with a supply of electricity for several billion years to come. These are dangerous neighbors, and their bright light that we observe is reflections from the matter of a young galaxy that has disappeared in a black hole. Fortunately, we are not talking about a threat to our planet - such phenomena have not been noticed in nearby galaxies. Observation of the oldest objects that have become the same age as the Universe has shown that it is not just growing, but is scattering at tremendous speed.

Appearances really can be deceiving sometimes. Well, who would have thought that weak stars, accessible only to fairly large telescopes, would turn out to be the brightest lamps of the Universe?

They would be considered ordinary stars if they did not emit relatively intense radio waves. By 1963, five point sources of cosmic radio emission became known, initially called “radio stars.” However, this term was soon considered unsuccessful and the mysterious radio emitters began to be called quasi-stellar radio sources, or quasars for short.

By studying the spectrum of quasars, astronomers became convinced that they are very far from Earth and belong to the world of galaxies. Moreover, it gradually became clear that quasars are generally the most distant space objects accessible to humans today. So, already at first it turned out that the distance to the quasar 3C 273 is equal to two billion light years, and the quasar is moving away from the Earth at a speed of 50,000 km/sec! Currently, about 1,500 quasars are known, and the most distant of them is approximately 15 billion light years away from us! Note that this quasar is also the fastest - it “runs away” from us at a speed close to the speed of light!

When the almost unimaginable distance of quasars became apparent, the question arose: what kind of bodies (or systems of bodies) are they and why do they shine so brightly? Even an ordinary quasar emits light tens and hundreds of times stronger than the largest galaxies, consisting of hundreds of billions of stars. And there are quasars, even tens of times brighter. It is characteristic that quasars emit in the entire electromagnetic range from X-ray waves to radio waves, and for many of them infrared (“thermal”) radiation is especially powerful. Even the average quasar is brighter than 300 billion suns!

With all these properties, it turned out quite unexpectedly that the brightness of quasars experiences noticeable fluctuations, like those of variable stars. The most surprising thing was that the periods of such fluctuations are sometimes extremely short - weeks, days or even less. A quasar has recently been discovered with a brightness change period of only about 200 seconds!

This fact indisputably indicated that the sizes of quasars are relatively small. There is nothing in nature faster than light. Therefore, interaction within any material system cannot occur faster than 300,000 km/sec. This means that if a quasar changes its brightness, then its dimensions do not exceed the corresponding number of light years, days or hours. To put it more clearly, any object that changes brightness with a period of “t” years has a diameter of no more than “t” light years.

It follows from this that the sizes of quasars are very small and their diameters, as a rule, do not exceed several hundred astronomical units. Let us remind the reader that the diameter of our planetary system is 100 AU, which means that quasars are comparable in size to the planetary system. A quasar with a period of 200 seconds has a diameter of 6. 10 10 m, which is half the radius of the earth's orbit. Where do monstrously large reserves of energy come from in such a small volume of outer space?

It was found that quasars can exist for no more than several million years and during their lifetime they emit a fantastic energy of 1055 J. However, the spectrum of quasars in chemical composition is not much different from the spectrum of ordinary stars. In some cases, it is possible to distinguish the duality of quasars and the heterogeneity of their structure. Thus, near the quasar 3C 273, a fiber was discovered that was ejected from the quasar as a result of some powerful explosion. All this indicates powerful explosive processes, and quasars appear to modern astrophysicists as objects “overflowing” with energy, from which they are trying in every possible way to free themselves.

According to some astronomers, quasars are superstars with a mass a billion times greater than the Sun. In such a superstar, during thermonuclear reactions of converting hydrogen into helium, an energy of 1055 J could be released over millions of years. The trouble is that, according to modern theoretical concepts, as already mentioned, stars with a mass more than 100 times greater than Suns are unstable.

Others believe that quasars are supermassive black holes with the mass of billions of suns. The sucking of huge masses of gas into the hole could, in their opinion, lead to the observed powerful energy release. Many people believe that quasars are the active nuclei of very distant galaxies.

It should be remembered that when observing quasars, we see the past, billions of years removed from our era. It is curious that as we move into the depths of world space, the number of discovered quasars first increases and then decreases. This fact proves that quasars are a short-term form of existence of matter. It is possible that quasars are fragments, fragments of that super-dense body filled with energy, from which the observable part of the Universe was formed during an explosion 15-20 billion years ago. Whether this is actually true will become clear in the future.

A quasar is a particularly powerful and distant active galactic nucleus. The English term quasar is derived from the words quasistellar (“quasi-stellar” or “star-like”) and radiosource (“radio source”) and literally means “quasi-stellar radio source.”

Quasars are among the brightest objects in the Universe - their radiation power is sometimes tens or hundreds of times greater than the total power of all the stars in galaxies like ours. Traces of parent galaxies around quasars (and not all of them) were discovered only later. Quasars were first recognized as high-redshift objects with electromagnetic radiation (including radio waves and visible light) and such small angular sizes that for several years after their discovery they could not be distinguished from “point sources” - stars (by contrast, extended sources are more consistent with galaxies). In their properties, these pseudostellar radio sources are similar to active galactic nuclei. Many astrophysicists believe that the luminosity of these objects is not maintained by thermonuclear means. The energy of quasars is gravitational energy that is released due to the catastrophic compression occurring in the galactic core.

In addition to the modern definition, there was also the original one: “A quasar is a class of celestial objects that in the optical range are similar to a star, but have strong radio emission and extremely small angular dimensions (less than 10″).” The initial definition was formed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the first quasars were discovered and their study had just begun. And there is nothing wrong with this definition, except for the following fact. As it turned out, as of 2004, a maximum of 10% of quasars emit powerful radio emission. And the remaining 90% do not emit strong radio waves. Astronomers call such objects radio-quiet quasars.

The most popular hypothesis today is that a quasar is a huge black hole that sucks in the surrounding space. As they approach the black hole, the particles accelerate and collide with each other - and this leads to powerful radio emission. If a black hole also has a magnetic field, then it also collects particles into beams - so-called jets - which fly away from the poles. In other words, the glow that astronomers observe is all that remains of a galaxy that died in a black hole. According to other versions, quasars are young galaxies, the process of emergence, the birth of which we observe. Some scientists suggest that a quasar is a young galaxy that is being devoured by a black hole.

Be that as it may, astrophysicists very closely connect the existence of quasars and the fate of galaxies. The first quasar, 3C 48, was discovered in the late 1950s by Alan Sandage and Thomas Matthews during a radio sky survey. In 1963, 5 quasars were already known. In the same year, Dutch astronomer Martin Schmidt proved that the lines in the spectra of quasars are strongly redshifted. Assuming that this redshift is caused by the effect of cosmological redshift resulting from the removal of quasars, the distance to them was determined using Hubble's law. Recently, it has been accepted that the source of radiation is the accretion disk of a supermassive black hole located in the center of the galaxy, and, therefore, the red shift of quasars is greater than the cosmological one by the amount of gravitational shift predicted by A. Einstein in the general theory of relativity. It is very difficult to determine the exact number of quasars discovered to date. This is explained, on the one hand, by the constant discovery of new quasars, and on the other, by the absence of a clear boundary between quasars and other types of active galaxies. In the Hewitt-Burbridge list published in 1987, the number of quasars was 3594. In 2005, a group of astronomers used data on 195,000 quasars in their study. One of the closest and brightest quasars, 3C 273, has a redshift z = 0.158 (which corresponds to a distance of about 3 billion light years). The most distant quasars, due to their gigantic luminosity, hundreds of times greater than the luminosity of ordinary galaxies, are recorded using radio telescopes at a distance of more than 12 billion light years. years. As of July 2011, the most distant quasar (ULAS J112001.48+064124.3) is located at a distance of about 13 billion light years. years from Earth. The irregular variability of quasar brightness on time scales of less than a day indicates that the region where their radiation is generated is small, comparable to the size of the Solar System. In 1982, Australian astronomers discovered a new quasar, called PKS 200-330, which was found to have a record redshift of Z = 3.78 for that time. This means that the spectral lines of an astronomical object receding from us, as a result of the Doppler effect, have a wavelength 3.78 times greater than the value of a stationary light source. The distance to this quasar, visible through an optical telescope as a nineteenth-magnitude star, is 12.8 billion light years. In the second half of the 80s, several more of the most distant quasars were recorded, the redshift of which already exceeded 4.0. Thus, radio signals sent by these quasars when our Galaxy, including the Solar system, had not yet been formed, can only be registered on earth today. And these rays travel a huge distance - more than 13 billion light years. These successive astronomical discoveries were made during a competitive scientific race between Australian astronomers at Siding Spring Observatory and their American colleagues at Mount Palomar Observatory in California. Today, the most distant object from us is the quasar PC 1158+4635 with a redshift of 4.733. The distance to it is 13.2 billion light years.

But at the same Mount Palomar Observatory, using a 5-meter telescope, American stellar researchers led by the brave quasar hunter M. Schmidt in September 1991 finally confirmed rumors about the existence of an astronomical object more distant from us. The redshift of the record-distant quasar number PC 1247+3406 is 4.897. It seems that there is nowhere else to go. The radiation from this quasar reaches our planet in a time almost equal to the age of the Universe. Recent observations have shown that most quasars are located near the centers of huge elliptical galaxies.

The bolometric (integrated over the entire spectrum) luminosity of quasars can reach 10 46 - 10 47 erg/s. On average, a quasar produces about 10 trillion times more energy per second than our Sun (and a million times more energy than the most powerful known star), and exhibits emission variability across all wavelength ranges.

Sometimes there is a designation with the prefix QSR.

All quasars are visible only in very large telescopes, and only the brightest quasar - 3C 273, under favorable observing conditions, can be found in a large amateur telescope.

Common list

The table is filled out in accordance with the wiki articles of the corresponding quasars, where links to authoritative sources are indicated. If the parameter value is indicated in the table as " ? ", which means its meaning is not on the wiki page for this quasar. The mark “-” means that the value of the parameter is unknown to science.

List of quasars with proper names

The following is a list of quasars that have their own names, not related to any surveys, catalogs or lists.

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Quasar and other AGN research groups

An excerpt characterizing the List of Quasars

“She came to visit me,” said Princess Marya. – The Count and Countess will be there one of these days. The Countess is in a terrible situation. But Natasha herself needed to see the doctor. She was forcibly sent with me.
– Yes, is there a family without its own grief? - Pierre said, turning to Natasha. – You know that it was on the very day we were released. I saw him. What a lovely boy he was.
Natasha looked at him, and in response to his words, her eyes only opened more and lit up.
– What can you say or think for consolation? - said Pierre. - Nothing. Why did such a nice boy, full of life, die?
“Yes, in our time it would be difficult to live without faith...” said Princess Marya.
- Yes Yes. “This is the true truth,” Pierre hastily interrupted.
- From what? – Natasha asked, looking carefully into Pierre’s eyes.
- How why? - said Princess Marya. – One thought about what awaits there...
Natasha, without listening to Princess Marya, again looked questioningly at Pierre.
“And because,” Pierre continued, “only that person who believes that there is a God who controls us can endure such a loss as hers and ... yours,” said Pierre.
Natasha opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but suddenly stopped. Pierre hastened to turn away from her and turned again to Princess Marya with a question about the last days of his friend’s life. Pierre's embarrassment had now almost disappeared; but at the same time he felt that all his former freedom had disappeared. He felt that over his every word and action there was now a judge, a court that was dearer to him than the court of all people in the world. He spoke now and, along with his words, reflected on the impression that his words made on Natasha. He did not deliberately say anything that might please her; but, no matter what he said, he judged himself from her point of view.
Princess Marya reluctantly, as always happens, began to talk about the situation in which she found Prince Andrei. But Pierre's questions, his animatedly restless gaze, his face trembling with excitement little by little forced her to go into details that she was afraid to recreate for herself in her imagination.
“Yes, yes, so, so...” said Pierre, bending forward with his whole body over Princess Marya and eagerly listening to her story. - Yes Yes; so has he calmed down? softened? He always sought one thing with all the strength of his soul; be quite good that he could not be afraid of death. The shortcomings that were in him - if there were any - did not come from him. So has he relented? - said Pierre. “What a blessing that he met you,” he said to Natasha, suddenly turning to her and looking at her with eyes full of tears.
Natasha's face trembled. She frowned and lowered her eyes for a moment. She hesitated for a minute: to speak or not to speak?
“Yes, it was happiness,” she said in a quiet chesty voice, “for me it was probably happiness.” – She paused. “And he... he... he said that he wanted this, the minute I came to him...” Natasha’s voice broke off. She blushed, clasped her hands on her knees and suddenly, apparently making an effort on herself, raised her head and quickly began to say:
– We didn’t know anything when we drove from Moscow. I didn't dare ask about him. And suddenly Sonya told me that he was with us. I didn’t think anything, I couldn’t imagine what position he was in; I just needed to see him, to be with him,” she said, trembling and gasping for breath. And, not allowing herself to be interrupted, she told what she had never told anyone before: everything that she experienced in those three weeks of their journey and life in Yaroslavl.