Quasars

[bish]

Hi all,

it’s been long in my observing list to fing a quasar but haven’t got around to it. I believe there is a relatively bright one in Virgo (mag 12.9?). Has anybody had a look for quasars? I assume I would need to download a specific star chart that marks it’s position?

thanks

Bish

[Davey-T]

I've imaged 3C273 in Virgo using 10"SCT it looks like a star but interesting when you realise how far away and bright it is.

The first one discovered I believe and a good one to start with.

Dave

[vlaiv]

Stellarium has quasar plugin that you can turn on to display bunch of them down to mag18 I think.

Problem is that I have not found a way to filter display for brighter ones.

[Davey-T]

As above it's in Stellarium but you'll have to wait until the new year to spot it I think.

Dave

[almcl]

This page might be worth a look:

http://umich.edu/~lowbrows/reflections/2010/csarnecki.23.html

and there's an image of 3C273 in my album:

 

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I have spotted 3 quasars to date: 3C273 in Virgo, Mrk 421 in Ursa Major, and OJ 287 in Cancer. The latter is my distance record at 3.5 billion light years away. They aren't much to look at until you realize that the little bit of light reaching your retina took over 3/4ths of the age of earth to reach you (in the case of OJ287).

[vlaiv]

I guess twin quasar would be a treat to observe (light from 8.7 billion Ly and gravity lensing all in one), but it's a tall order given that both images are around mag 16.7

[bish]

Thanks all. I will need to go to a darker sky with my 250px to catch you the brightest one. Maybe when I go to Kielder in the Spring. Will check out the Stellarium plug in.

[Owmuchonomy]

Last year there was the remarkable brightening of CTA102 to around mag 10.5 at its peak. I did an outreach event and had folk observe it. It’s unremarkable to view but very remarkable when you consider the origin of the light. It is almost halfway back to the Big Bang. There are threads on here about it including my image if you search for CTA102. Check the AAVSO website for current observed magnitudes. It is in Pegasus from memory.

[bish]

21 minutes ago, Owmuchonomy said:

Last year there was the remarkable brightening of CTA102 to around mag 10.5 at its peak. I did an outreach event and had folk observe it. It’s unremarkable to view but very remarkable when you consider the origin of the light. It is almost halfway back to the Big Bang. There are threads on here about it including my image if you search for CTA102. Check the AAVSO website for current observed magnitudes. It is in Pegasus from memory.

Thanks - I can’t believe that I missed that one!

[Paz]

BL LAC in Lacerta gets brighter than mag 15, it's not easy to spot but it is in a nicely placed bit of sky at the moment, although I don't know where it is in its brightness range which goes down to mag 17 or so.

[bomberbaz]

Sorry for the slightly obvious question but where are these situated. Given our milky way is only 120 - 200K light years across it is obviously not in ours!

[Davey-T]

21 minutes ago, bomberbaz said:

Sorry for the slightly obvious question but where are these situated. Given our milky way is only 120 - 200K light years across it is obviously not in ours!

In a galaxy far far away if we had one closer it could be as bright as the Sun.

Dave

[Paz]

23 minutes ago, bomberbaz said:

Sorry for the slightly obvious question but where are these situated. Given our milky way is only 120 - 200K light years across it is obviously not in ours!

Quasars are galaxies very far away from our own galaxy. We see them as they were a ling time in the past.

They are galaxies with active nuclei that create enough light to make them visible so far away. Most galaxies are not bright enough to do this.

[bomberbaz]

Ok start up stellarium, go into configuration (F2 key) and click the scrips tab to enable quasars in the programme.

A list of the quasars you can look for is here: https://sites.google.com/site/stellariumuserguide/quasars-list

Happy days, going to try and fin one with my dob next time out.

[cloudsweeper]

If you can still see Hercules (I can't - it's behind trees now) try NGC 6166.  It's an AGN (active galactic nucleus).  This designation takes in many objects including blazars and quasars.  Stellarium has NGC 6166 as a quasar, but this is not certain apparently.  However, I recently contacted someone at Cornell who stated that it is probably a quasar.

I really want to look for it, but I'll have to wait a while!

Doug.

[Nyctimene]

With a 10", I'd give PG 1634+706 in Draco a try. With mags between 14.2 and 14.7 doable even with 8" under good conditions (some claim, even with a 5" frac - ?). Spotted it first in Sept 2014, and it was rather easy with the 18". Really far away with a light travel time of 8.6 Myr - light from the time, before our solar system existed; fascinating, when you look at this tiny dim point of light. Easy to find with a close pair of 8 mag stars nearby.

Data and  DSS finder chart  attached:

http://quasar.square7.ch/fqm/1634+706.html

The main page of quasar.square lists more than 60 Qso's.

Good luck with the hunt!

Stephan

[bish]

19 hours ago, cloudsweeper said:

If you can still see Hercules (I can't - it's behind trees now) try NGC 6166.  It's an AGN (active galactic nucleus).  This designation takes in many objects including blazars and quasars.  Stellarium has NGC 6166 as a quasar, but this is not certain apparently.  However, I recently contacted someone at Cornell who stated that it is probably a quasar.

I really want to look for it, but I'll have to wait a while!

Doug.

Interesting. I will have a look

[bish]

19 hours ago, Nyctimene said:

With a 10", I'd give PG 1634+706 in Draco a try. With mags between 14.2 and 14.7 doable even with 8" under good conditions (some claim, even with a 5" frac - ?). Spotted it first in Sept 2014, and it was rather easy with the 18". Really far away with a light travel time of 8.6 Myr - light from the time, before our solar system existed; fascinating, when you look at this tiny dim point of light. Easy to find with a close pair of 8 mag stars nearby.

Data and  DSS finder chart  attached:

http://quasar.square7.ch/fqm/1634+706.html

The main page of quasar.square lists more than 60 Qso's.

Good luck with the hunt!

Stephan

Thanks. I need a good dark sky trip