In a telescope, object 3C273 will look like an ordinary star to you--it looked like an ordinary star to astronomers until the 1950s, too. In fact it is a quasar, or quasi-stellar radio source. These objects might look like stars, but they emit radio noise and are very distant--in the case of 3C273 above, nearly 2.5 billion light years away.
3C273 is bright enough to be seen with a very good backyard telescope. If you can find it, you can look back billions of years in time. Read 3C273 - Quasar in Virgo to learn how to find it in the night sky.
