The term quasar is a concatenation of quasi-stellar radio source — so called because when they were first identified, astronomers like Hong-Yee Chiu, who coined the term, were completely baffled by these strange interstellar objects.

Existing surveys have logged 10 million radio sources across the sky, Hallinan says.

Hence the name “quasar,” an abbreviation that recognized their starlike properties, and stands for quasi-stellar radio source.

Most of the radio sources turned out to be ordinary elliptical galaxies.

Researchers called them “quasi-stellar radio sources,” or quasars, for short — even though no one could figure out what a quasar was.