Very Deep space QSO

[Terry B]

Dear All
i have been taking time series images of TT Ari and noted a few QSO in the field that I have been imaging.
I stacked a couple of hours worth of exposures- just added with no normalisation. This mimics a continuous exposure of the total time but lets all the stars saturate.
I then plate solved the very dirty image and used canopus software to find the exact coordinate of the quasar on the imae. A very dim spot is at the correct coordinates.
The images are 120sec exposures through a R filter and there were 83 exposures in the stack.
The Quasar is called 0203+150 and is a BL Lac object with a mag of 19.9 according to the Hewitt catalogue (http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov/adc-cgi/cat.pl?/catalogs/7/7158/)
It has a redshift of 2.1
All in all it is a very long way away.:D

[strongmanmike]

Very cool Terry! :thumbsup:

Mike

[DavidU]

Mag 19.9 !
Big effort Terry..

[coldspace]

Wow is all I can say, Is this about 10 Billion LY away ?

This is showing what amateurs can do, simply amazing.
I love following these things and S/nova,comet,etc discoveries.

Well done :thumbsup:.

Matt.

[Paul Haese]

That is such cool work Terry. Amazing to find this sort of thing.

[TrevorW]

Good one Terry something different

[Manav]

There is just so much to look at and so much to explore and learn. This is one of the reason why I love astronomy so much.

Thanks for posting something different and refreshing.

[bmitchell82]

thats cool. but i couldn't get over how many galaxies are in the image. for a start i though, oblong stars tracking wasn't great, then hang on if you can capture a mag 19 object.... tracking is perfect, dyam theres a fair few in there :)
:eyepop::thumbsup:

[sheeny]

Good stuff!

Al.

[Ric]

Excellent capture Terry.

Well done

[erick]

So it's not a spec of dust? :whistle: Mag 19.9! :eek:

[Terry B]

Yes, there are lots of galaxies. The image is very stretched to show the QSO but when it is less stretched the galaxies are more evident as they look more like stars in this image.
The starlike image just above the QSO is another galaxy. When I first looked at the pic I thought that it was the QSO but it's coordinates are not quite correct.
There is another QSO in the field at mag 20.1 but I coudn't find anything at the coordinates- just too dim.
I have a few more hours of images from other nights. I might try to add them all together and see whether the other QSO can be seen.

[SkyViking]

What a great catch Terry, congratulations :) I've just created another thread recently here http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=53164
You might want to add your image there. Hopefully we can get a little collection of the farthest objects.

Regards,
Rolf