[SunkenCiv]

[Video Credit: NASA, DOE, International Fermi LAT Collaboration]

[Steely Tom]

I remember being fascinated with 3C279 when I was a kid. When it was discovered, in 1971, I was 15.

If memory serves, it was the first "quasar" ever discovered.

In addition to being incredibly luminous, the spectrum of the light it emits is unlike that of normal stars.

According to Wikipedia, 3C279 is one of the brightest gamma ray sources in the entire sky.

If it emits gamma rays as a result of thermodynamic processes, the temperatures in its vicinity are so high as to be hard to believe and impossible to comprehend.

Quasars prove the truth of the words of British astronomer Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington: Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.

Sir Arthur passed away 27 years before 3C279 was discovered.

[Red Badger]

Gamma-ray Rain from 3C 279?

Do I need a plutonium umbrella?.........................