FREE-Burpee A 
Fall Bulb and 
Nursery Catalog 
— with dozens of 
Christmas and holi- 
day gift ideas for 
gardeners. 
Burpee's 1981 Fall Bulb 
and Nursery Catalog has 
68 big colorful pages of: 
finest quality bulbs that 
produce large beautiful 
blooms— grapes— 
berries— fruit trees— 
flowering shrubs— 
trees— house plants— harvest and garden aids. 
Send for your free Burpee Catalog today 
and get your entry form for Burpee's Fifth 
Garden Party Drawing. Grand Prize: Trip for 2 
to the famous gardens of Holland and England 
—the kind of vacation that most gardeners 
dream about, and very few experience. 
Hundreds of other prizes. (No purchase 
necessary to win.) 
For your free Burpee Catalog mail coupon be- 
low today. Burpee’s Garden Party Drawing ends 
Dec. 31, 1981. Void where prohibited by law. 
© Burpee Seed Co. 1981 
BURPEE SEED CO. 
521 Burpee Building, 
Warminster, PA 18974, Clinton, IA 52732 
| (Please mail to nearest address.) 
j Please send a free copy of Burpee's 1981 Fall 
[ Bulb and Nursery Catalog-including an entry 
I form for Burpee's Garden Party Drawing to: 
Name 
(Please print) 
Address 
I City State Zip 
FROG Stickers 
This Happy Green Frog, printed with 
W'\ your name and address or slogan 
\l or Slogan 
I J adds a little fun to letters, books, 
'/ luggage, toys, promotions. 
Frog Shape. Self-Stick 
(half size) 
100 for $6.50 or 200 for $9.20 ppd 
FROGS, 
Box 735-T, Acton, Mass. 01720 
r BOOK HUNTING 
Virtually any book located — no matter how 
old or long out-of-print Fiction, nonfiction. 
All authors, subjects. Name the book — we’ll 
find Itl (Title alone Is sufficient) Inquire, 
please. Write: Dept. 71 
BOOKS-ON-FILE P.O. BOX 195 
V UNION CITY, NEW JERSEY 07087 J 
PERU 
CUSCO - MACHU PICCHU 
The largest 
packages including First Class 
and Delux hotels, at the 
lowest price ever. 
CALL NOW-TOLL FREE 1-800-223-1367 
IN N Y. CALL COLLECT (212) 582-7811 
VALISHA TRAVEL 
250 W. 57th. St. 
N.Y.C. 10019 
Sky Reporter 
Seeing Double 
and Seeing Triple 
The images of far distant single objects appear to be multiplied 
in accordance with a phenomenon predicted by Einstein 
by Stephen P. Maran 
During the past two years, astrono- 
mers have been studying two quasars: 
one that looks double in photographs 
and one that looks triple. But it turns 
out that these multiple photographic 
images are simply cosmic proofs that 
appearances can be deceiving. In each 
case, there is only one real quasar, 
and we are, in fact, “seeing double” 
and “seeing triple.” 
Quasars are the so-called quasi-stel- 
lar radio sources. They emit intense 
radio waves, as well as much visible 
and infrared light, X-rays, and gamma 
rays. A single quasar, although not 
much larger than the solar system, 
may be thousands of times brighter 
than a whole galaxy of hundreds of 
billions of stars. Thus, quasars are the 
most energetic class of objects in the 
universe. As a class, they are also the 
most distant objects known (see “Qua- 
sars Confirmed,” Natural History, 
February 1980), and they are very 
rare. Despite extensive surveys, fewer 
than 2,000 quasars have been found, 
and these are typically separated from 
one another by tens of millions of light- 
years. 
Given such large separations, it was 
remarkable when what appeared to 
be a double quasar was found, with 
its two members, 0957+561 A and 
0957+561 B, separated by less than 
6 seconds of arc (or 1/300 the ap- 
parent diameter of the moon). This 
corresponds to an actual separation 
between 0957+561 A and 0957+561 
B of only about 220,000 light-years. 
The discovery of the apparently 
double quasar was made on March 
29, 1979, by Dennis Walsh, a radio 
astronomer at the University of Man- 
chester, and two quasar experts, Rob- 
ert F. Carswell of Cambridge Uni- 
versity and Ray Weymann of the Uni- 
versity of Arizona. With the 84-inch 
telescope at Kitt Peak National Ob- 
servatory in Arizona, they found that 
the two members of the double quasar 
have similar spectra. The same ab- 
sorption lines and emission lines are 
present with the same strengths in the 
two spectra, and the quasars have the 
same red shifts as well. Emission lines 
are bright spots in a spectrum caused 
by radiation from specific atomic ele- 
ments; absorption lines are dark places 
resulting from atoms that cut oft light 
at certain wavelengths. The similarity 
in spectral lines and red shifts between 
the two quasars meant A and B (as 
I shall call them) were at virtually 
the same distance from the earth and 
had similar chemical compositions and 
physical conditions. 
The similar spectra led some as- 
tronomers to believe that a true binary 
quasar system had been found. In 
other words, they thought that A and 
B were in orbit around a common cen- 
ter of gravity, like the two members 
of a binary star, and that they must 
have been born together through what- 
ever process it is that makes a quasar. 
This was my reaction as well, and 
it occurred to me that the uncanny 
similarity of A and B was evidence 
for the relatively unpublicized “spi- 
nar” theory of quasars. According to 
this theory, the energy of a quasar 
is derived from a very massive, rapidly 
rotating object, or spinar. If a spinar 
spun too fast, it might well split apart, 
perhaps producing two identical qua- 
sars. This argument may sound logi- 
24 
