quasar

The name quasar is short for quasi-stellar radio source. Quasars are extremely bright, starlike objects that emit various types of radiation, including radio waves. Quasars are the oldest known objects in the universe.

Quasars appear to be faint, close stars, but in reality they are extremely distant. They are moving away from Earth at tremendous speeds, some at up to 90 percent of the speed of light. (The speed of light is 186,282.397 miles per second.) Because a quasar is so far away, it takes several billion years for its light to reach Earth. And these mysterious objects are so bright that they shine with more light than 100 galaxies combined.

Quasars were first identified in 1963 by astronomer (a scientist specializing in the study of matter in outer space) Maarten Schmidt (1929) at the Palomar Observatory in California.