THE DISCOVERY OF QUASARS

SCHMIDT, M.

3C 273: A Star-like Object with Large Red-shift.

London, Macmillan & Co., 1963. Royal8vo. Bound in contemporary full cloth with black leather title-label with gilt lettering to spine. In "Nature", Vol. 197, 1963. Bookplates pasted on to front free end-papers, library stamp to title page. Otherwise a very fine and clean copy. P. 1040. [Entire volume: XLIX, II, (1), 1332 pp].

First publication of the very first observation of a quasar.
"The nature of the quasars remained a mystery, but the discovery of this very bright example enabled Maarten Schmidt to obtain a high-quality optical spectrum of 3C 272 with the Palomar two-hundred-inch telescope, in California. Maarten Schmidt's elucidation of its nature opened completely new perspectives for astronomy and high-energy astrophysics" (A Century of Nature).

A quasar (quasi-stellar radio source) is a very energetic and distant active galactic nucleus. Quasars are extremely luminous and were first identified as being high redshift sources of electromagnetic energy, including radio waves and visible light, that were point-like, similar to stars, rather than extended sources similar to galaxies.

This volume of Nature also contains three other seminal papers on 3C 273: J. B. Okie's "Absolute Energy Distribution in the Optical Spectrum of 3C 273;" Jesse L. Greenstein and Thomas A Matthew's "Red Shift of the Unusual Radio Source 3C 48;" and C. Hazard, M. B. Mackey, and A. J. Shimmin's "Investigation of the Radio Source 2C 273 by the Method of Lunar Occulations."

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