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   63036
   Recently, during the Pico Dos Dias (PDS) survey for young stellar
   objects, the discovery of a new nearby bright radio-quiet quasar has
   been made. The quasar named PDS456, discovered at low galactic
   latitude, has been measured to have a blue magnitude of B=14.69 at a
   redshift of z=0.184. When de-reddened, this equates to an absolute
   magnitude of M(B)=-26.7, which is about 1.3 times the luminosity of
   3C273. Evolutionary theories of quasars predict few luminous quasars in
   the nearby Universe. The existence of two low-redshift luminous
   quasars, PDS456 and 3C273, implies evolution proceeds at a lower rate
   than usually predicted. Understanding the nature of PDS456 and how it
   compares to 3C273 and other more distant quasars is therefore of great
   importance.
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