Ep 65: Quasars
ToKCast
00:00
The History of Radio Stars
In 1962 the radio telescope in Australia had to be pointed close to the horizon. The director of the telescope John Bolton was worried about being able to see the object in the radio band. He dug a trench around the telescope so the dish could dip below ground level. Not only that he asked for local radio stations to be switched off during the observations. In 1960 and 61 there were already astronomers reporting the existence of so called radio stars. These were stars that were quite unusual in putting out a lot of radio waves but also they had unusual spectra. This is curious because of course later we would learn they were indeed from outside the galaxy.
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