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Light from a young universe


Martin Meredith

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Is it possible in near real-time observing to capture photons that set out in the first billion years of the life of the universe? Under current estimates of the age of the universe and its expansion, any such object will have a redshift of at least 5.7. 

While preparing the indices that will accompany the forthcoming deep maps release, I spotted a possibility listed in the Veron catalogue [1], which goes under the unromantic name of SPIT J17210+6017 after the Spitzer First Look Survey. This quasar has an estimated redshift of just a fraction under 5.8, corresponding to light seen from a universe just 0.97 billion years old. A listed V magnitude of 20.6 makes it a very challenging target for my alt-az mounted 8" scope.
This object lies in the rich galaxy fields in the centre of Draco, more or less equidistant between NGC 6361 (Arp 124) and VV 1840, the former being my starting off point last night before hopping down to identify the correct field for the quasar. With a sky of SQM 20.3 I went for 30 second subs.
With some wishful thinking, the quasar started to appear after live stacking of 6 or 7 subs, but by 10 it was reasonably certain:
post-11492-0-59828200-1446972014.png
I continued stacking just to be sure. Here are closeups at 10, 16 and 28 subs, compared to the DSS image.
post-11492-0-57082700-1446972047_thumb.p
There are even more distant quasars listed (this doesn't quite make the top 20 in the Veron catalogue) but most are significantly fainter (but still worth hunting down!).
Thanks for looking, and a big thanks to Paul for the robust live stacking in LodestarLive that makes this kind of thing so much fun.
Martin
[1] Quasars and Active Galactic Nuclei (13th Ed.) (Veron+ 2010), accessed as 
Table VII_258_vv10 on VizieR.
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Thanks Tony and BigSumorian. You're right, it's been lost in translation in the 16x case (looks ok on the png I have in front of me). I operate with my laptop plugged in to a larger monitor and just dragging the image from one to the other makes a huge difference too.

Tony, the distance corresponds to about 12.8 billion light years. It would be great to reach 13 billion but that corresponds to a redshift of about 6.6. The closest I can see is 6.4 for a mag 21.6 QSO in Pisces….

Martin

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.. all that way for those little photons to end up on SGL, and then radiate thieir cousins from a bunch of computer screens to start a new odessey across the Universe. Wonders never cease, and what a tale they could tell, if not that the journey for them was but an instant in their relative frame.

P

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Martin,

Fantastic find. It is amazing to think that those photons have been traveling for over 12B years and nothing got in the way of them getting to your CCD : )

The furthest I have looked into the past is 8B ly (Einstein' cross) which is a gravitationally lensed quasar. I was not able to separate/resolve the lobes but could just barely make out the outline using a longer (60s) exposure with my original lodestar at f10 with a borrowed 10".

Any thoughts yet on which objects you will target to break the 13B distance? Maybe we can create a target/observation list for anyone interested and have folks post their results in a thread here. Should be a fun project.

Hiten

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Hi Hiten

Since you ask for targets, perhaps I can take this opportunity to release a preview of the QSO index that will accompany the maps. This one is ordered by redshift. This is just a selection based on either brightness (all 464 brighter than Vmag 14 are included), high redshift (all those with z > 4 and Vmag < 24 are included) or high luminosity.

Clicking on a constellation label brings up the list in that constellation. The complete set of indices allows for sorting by any of the highlighted columns, and will include the other DSO types in the first line, but I need to do some final checks before releasing them. And clicking on the object name will bring up the appropriate deep map when I release them.

QSzD.pdf

I'd be interested to see if it formats OK as I've used a fairly uncommon font. Unfortunately, it seems certain PDF readers don't handle hyperlinks correctly, or are rather slow (e.g. Preview on the Mac), but Acroread is fine. But this is a screenshot fragment of how it should look:

post-11492-0-67560500-1447003989_thumb.p

So choose your targets!

Martin

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Thanks NameUnknown -- I really like that way of looking at it. Thanks too Nytecam, LaserJock and Chris. 

Hiten, the next maps release will be soon but a couple of clear nights we've been having has set it back a bit (not complaining!). I've just figured out a reasonable way to deal with dense star regions so its just a matter of incorporating it so I can go for a whole-sky release. 

Martin 

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Fantastic Martin, this is an amazing achievement and showcases what EAA can open up for us amateur astronomers.

Also what is really impressive is your research and maps to guide you onto the target for observing, I always learn something new from your posts!

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