Astronomers find quasars are not nailed to the sky
Thursday, April 25, 2019 - 09:10
in Astronomy & Space
Until recently, quasars were thought to have essentially fixed positions in the sky. While near-Earth objects move along complex trajectories, quasars are so remote that they were believed to offer stable and reliable reference points for use in navigation and plate tectonics research. Now, an international team of astrophysicists featuring researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology has found that quasars are not entirely motionless and explained this behavior. The findings were published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.