Whats the furthest away thing you've imaged?

[Astro Waves]

I did kinda meant targeted, but if its in the background its still super interesting to learn about other peoples knowledge and also get my mind blown by it!

[Marvin Jenkins]

I understand. The universe is a mind blowing place and I feel lucky as a beginner to be able to image a galaxy or a nebula and have almost instant viewing, via DSLR screen or laptop.

We are quite spoilt really, but that inner part in most of us always reaches to the summit and we see what the best are doing.

I only asked about targeted versus background as if this were serious, then Hubble (Space telescope) would have us all scratching our heads.

Marv

[DaveS]

In that case the deepest object(s) I've targeted (Though a secondary target) would be Hickson 56 at a paltry 425 MLY. Previous would be Stephan's Quintet at 300-ish MLY

[Astro Waves]

nice, you got any images? I have no idea what either of those are.

[whitfieldp]

15 hours ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

I was of the understanding via the post from the OP on April 24th that they meant the most distant object targeted.

I maybe wrong #whitfieldp and please correct me if I am, but your post said that your Astrobin image was of the ‘owl nebula‘.

Is your image targeting the QSO or is the QSO a background object? I wanted to know as the definition of targeted, and happens to be in the background is fundamental to the OPs question. 

I found the rest of your answer utterly fascinating although I have to confess a little above my pay grade. Although a lot of what you posted has me delving for more information.

Marvin

There are a number of images with QSOs on my Astrobin. The original one from 13 April was of the Owl Nebula and Surfboard Galaxy when I accidentally found out about the QSO close to the Owl Nebula. I've deliberately targeted a couple of different QSOs since just because of my curious nature....

[whitfieldp]

15 hours ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

I was of the understanding via the post from the OP on April 24th that they meant the most distant object targeted.

I maybe wrong #whitfieldp and please correct me if I am, but your post said that your Astrobin image was of the ‘owl nebula‘.

Is your image targeting the QSO or is the QSO a background object? I wanted to know as the definition of targeted, and happens to be in the background is fundamental to the OPs question. 

I found the rest of your answer utterly fascinating although I have to confess a little above my pay grade. Although a lot of what you posted has me delving for more information.

Marvin

The QSO next to the Owl was purely by accident, the later ones were deliberately targeted. There's really not much visually interesting in the frame with QSO APM 08270+5255 so you're not likely to get that by accident. The twin quasar has a decent sized galaxy in the wider field but isn't exactly APOD fodder either!

Pam

oops just seen I've replied to the same post twice - sorry

Edited May 14, 2021 by whitfieldp

[whitfieldp]

15 hours ago, Astro Waves said:

I did kinda meant targeted, but if its in the background its still super interesting to learn about other peoples knowledge and also get my mind blown by it!

I targeted the last two but many folk would regard them as wasted imaging time as there isn't much eye-candy in there. It is very enlightening to plate solve images after the fact and find all the stuff hidden in the background. I did a recent long integration on M101 and found loads of stuff in Astap that I otherwise didn't know about

Pam

Edited May 14, 2021 by whitfieldp

[Martin Meredith]

Most fields I annotate have dozens of quasars marked (not all captured by any means!), and that's in a 0.4x0.3 degree field of view, such are the sizes of the quasar databases these days.

For those hunting very deep, here's a list of distant quasars under mag 22, ordered by decreasing redshift. These come from the MilliQuas dataset (Million Quasars, but actually just shy of 2 million these days). A couple of things to bear in mind

* I'm not showing the filter that these magnitudes come from. Mag 20 in the B filter is very different from mag 20 in the I or K band... (I've made this mistake a few times looking for distant quasars)

* Many quasars have a certainty attached which is less than 100%. A few years ago I set out to observe a z=6 quasar and managed to get some photons above the noise in the right place, but checking a year later it turned out to be a false alarm (either not a quasar, or quasar with a much reduced redshift)

You can check both of these factors by accessing the MilliQuas database directly in Vizier https://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=VII/280

Martin

[Xilman]

17 minutes ago, Martin Meredith said:

Most fields I annotate have dozens of quasars marked (not all captured by any means!), and that's in a 0.4x0.3 degree field of view, such are the sizes of the quasar databases these days.

For those hunting very deep, here's a list of distant quasars under mag 22, ordered by decreasing redshift. These come from the MilliQuas dataset (Million Quasars, but actually just shy of 2 million these days). A couple of things to bear in mind

* I'm not showing the filter that these magnitudes come from. Mag 20 in the B filter is very different from mag 20 in the I or K band... (I've made this mistake a few times looking for distant quasars)

* Many quasars have a certainty attached which is less than 100%. A few years ago I set out to observe a z=6 quasar and managed to get some photons above the noise in the right place, but checking a year later it turned out to be a false alarm (either not a quasar, or quasar with a much reduced redshift)

You can check both of these factors by accessing the MilliQuas database directly in Vizier https://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=VII/280

Martin

Really nice to see someone using mag 22.0 as a realistic cut-off for amateur astronomy.

Most people seem to give up at around 18 or so, even though 22 is achievable with a 20cm telescope.

To be fair, it can be difficult finding charts which show background stars and galaxies. Incidentally, it seems that galaxies are about as common as stars (per square degree) at around mag 22.

 

Edited May 14, 2021 by Xilman
Add third para.

[JeremyS]

Good to see people attempting to go really faint on challenging objects. It always seems a bit of a shame to see yet another image of Messier xx, when today’s instruments are capable of so much more.
 

I regularly get to mag 19.5 in a single 30 sec exposure with my C 11. OK, not good enough SNR for photometry, but I can always stack - and go much fainter.

[whitfieldp]

4 hours ago, Martin Meredith said:

For those hunting very deep, here's a list of distant quasars under mag 22, ordered by decreasing redshift. These come from the MilliQuas dataset (Million Quasars, but actually just shy of 2 million these days). A couple of things to bear in mind

* I'm not showing the filter that these magnitudes come from. Mag 20 in the B filter is very different from mag 20 in the I or K band... (I've made this mistake a few times looking for distant quasars)

* Many quasars have a certainty attached which is less than 100%. A few years ago I set out to observe a z=6 quasar and managed to get some photons above the noise in the right place, but checking a year later it turned out to be a false alarm (either not a quasar, or quasar with a much reduced redshift)

You can check both of these factors by accessing the MilliQuas database directly in Vizier https://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=VII/280

Martin

Thanks for the link - I downloaded the MilliQuas data previously as a spreadsheet which is rather less user-friendly

Pam

[Xilman]

20 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Good to see people attempting to go really faint on challenging objects. It always seems a bit of a shame to see yet another image of Messier xx, when today’s instruments are capable of so much more.
 

I regularly get to mag 19.5 in a single 30 sec exposure with my C 11. OK, not good enough SNR for photometry, but I can always stack - and go much fainter.

19.5 in 30s is pretty good!

In my case, the best I managed in a single night was 22.2, with a 150 minute stack. That on a 0.4m Dilworth / SX 814 combination.

Edited May 14, 2021 by Xilman
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