Near, Far Away(?)

[coatesg]

This story starts in 1995, and I'm going to present my take on the area under study from the third week of February. 

In June 1995, the following letter was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics concerning two bright Xray sources symmetrically placed about NGC 4258 (ref: 1995A&A...298L...1B):

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1995A%26A...298L...1B&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf

As it turns out, NGC 4258 is otherwise known as M106, one of the closest and brightest Seyfert Type 2 galaxies to our own Milky Way. Burbidge found that these objects were in fact quasars, with redshifts of 0.39 (J1218+472) and 0.65 (J1219+473). Burbidge, who worked closely with Fred Hoyle, argues (as does Halton Arp in a later paper - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00642276), that the association of these QSOs with M106 is not accidental, and that the redshifts arise from the ejection velocities of the objects from the host (pretty quick!).

All three scientists were strong proponents of non-Big Bang cosmologies though, so you may detect a slight bias here: later work (eg Reynolds, Nowak, Maloney, http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/309327/pdf) appears to suggest one of these (J1281+472) is associated with a cluster at redshift z~0.3, and that X-Ray luminosity and cluster temperatures are entirely consistent. So, this may well be a case of line of sight?

In the field as well (see the image below), is a further QSO with redshift ~1.04 - theory places this at around 8Gly in a flat cosmology. Not the furthest thing I've ever imaged, but still truly "Far Away". 

LRGB taken W oxfordshire 13th and 15th Feb 2018 (also posted in Deep Sky section - further image details there):

 

Annotated QSOs:

 

[Allinthehead]

Nice write up to go with a wonderful image.

[ollypenrice]

Agreed, fascinating for the mind and the eye. M106 is fabulous in Ha, by the way, with the jets being perfectly 'gettable.'

Olly

[coatesg]

Thanks both. HA would be great here (I just got one of the jets, but it's faint...). Trouble is lack of clear skies - nothing usable in 3 weeks now! :-/

[Shibby]

Spectacular - this one's gonna be hard to beat!