QUASARS
(QUASI-STELLAR RADIO SOURCES)
10/15/2012
Alec Fisher
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INTRODUCTION
What are they?
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How were they discovered, and
by whom?
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How do they work?
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What do they say about our
Universe?
(2) Artists Rendition of a Quasar
THE DISCOVERY
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The late 1950’s
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Radio Telescopes
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Lovell Telescope
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No objects could
be found to match
radio signatures
(3) The Dwingeloo Radio Telescope
3C 48 - 1960
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First of these faint
radio sources to have
an object with it
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Many unknown
emission lines
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Astronomer John
Bolton said Red-Shifted
(4) Quasar 3C 48 viewed in the Radio Spectrum
3C 273 - 1962
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Object was expected to make 5 occultations with the moon
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Astronomers Cyril Hazard and John Bolton use Parkes Radio Telescope
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Maarten Schmidt uses 200 inch Hale to obtain optical spectrum
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Shifted Hydrogen
(5)Spectral lines becoming progressively more redshifted
• What does this huge redshift imply for quasars?
• 3C 48 red shifted .378 and Quasars have been
found with redshift as high as z=7
• Very far away
• Farthest Quasar away is 12.9 Billion light years
• Hubble’s Law
WHY SO LUMINOUS?
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3C 273 has an absolute magnitude of -26.7 and 4 trillion times brighter than the sun.
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Most luminous objects in the known universe
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Appear as point sources, like stars, as opposed to extended sources, such as galaxies
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Unknown form of antimatter
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White holes
WHAT EXACTLY ARE THESE OBJECTS?
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Accretion disk models were successfully completed in the 1970s
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The energy emitted in relativity jets would explain why Quasars are so luminous
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Can convert 10% of mass into energy, as opposed to p-p chain nuclear fusion.
ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS!
(6) An artists drawing of a Quasar and a Blazar
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Quasi-stellar objects are the active nuclei inside
newly formed galaxies.
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Accretion disk on the supermassive black hole in
the nucleus.
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Periods of growth for the black hole.
WHY AREN’T ALL GALAXIES QUASARS?
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Need to consume at least 10 solar masses
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Most Luminous consume 600 Earths a minute
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Become normal galaxies after material is exhausted.
(9) What we think the milky way galaxy looks like
HOW DOES THIS KNOWLEDGE HELP US?
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Objects appear to us how they did at the beginning of the universe.
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Lets us see how galaxies act at the beginning of their creation.
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Proved Einstein’s theory of General Relativity.
(10) Curvature of Space-Time
(11) Twin Quasar that proves Einstein’s Theory
(12) The Einstein Cross
CONCLUSION
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Quasars are active galactic nuclei that are extremely bright and distance, making them
useful reference points in establishing a measurement grid on the night sky.
REFERENCES
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(1)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasar#History_of_observation
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(2)http://www.google.com/imgres?q=quasar&num=10&um=1&hl=en&biw=1600&bih=775&tbm=isch&t
bnid=9HdPRtqY0sGyaM:&imgrefurl
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(3)http://www.flickr.com/photos/59371508@N07/galleries/72157628248518759/
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(4)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3C_48
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(5) http://www.schoolphysics.co.uk/age14-16/Astronomy/text/Red_shift/index.html
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(6)http://astronomycentral.co.uk/most-distant-quasar-discovered/
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(7)http://www.astronomy.com/en/News-Observing/Ask%20Astro/2011/01/Blazar%20vs,-d,%20quasar.aspx
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(8)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermassive_black_hole
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(9)http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/8-2006/hidden-milky-way-deuterium-found.html
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(10)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens
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(11)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_QSO
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(12)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_Cross