Amateur Images the Edge of Everything!

[Aussie Pete]

G'Day IIS folks :),

This week we enabled one of our advanced drivers the opportunity to strive for something unheard of. And he did it! Breaking a record in amateur astronomy.

Dr Sasse captured Quasar J1148+5251 on a 17" telescope. Reaching out to the edge of the observable universe!

As far as we know, after much research, Dr Christian Sasse and the new G17 telescope in Spain have broken the record for amateur astronomy; the most distant amateur observation ever achieved on a truly accessible, amateur sized telescope.


to 12.79 billion yight years (quasar)
z=6.41

We amateurs are getting to places never dreamed of before.

See more on this news and images Here (http://www.global-rent-a-scope.com/gras-news/2011/2/7/imaging-the-edge-of-everything.html).
Cheers!

[bkm2304]

Right! that does it. I'm onto it. Never knew there were amateur records before! Makes my 20 mag, 9.7 Giga LY QSO (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=67421) effort look lazy .:astron:

Richard

[astroron]

Wow that is some achievment:eyepop:
Cheers

[strongmanmike]

Yeh but Richard, it was imaged with an IR sensitive outfit so it is hard to compare with an image taken in purely visible light..? They got this deep with a red sensitive FLI and the right filters - I am gathering IR filter..?

Hmm?..a "physicist-engineer" using a $100 000+ (?) instalation at a commercially operating Observatory...is now considered an amateur.. ..pushing the deffinition boundaries there a bit I recon :lol:

Amazing stuff still :thumbsup:

Mike
maybe I have a go with my pipe cleaner Starfire :lol:

[gregbradley]

Way to go - Planewave CDK17 was used as well as FLI cameras.

Gee, who else has one of those?

Greg.

[Galaxygazer]

Hi there, I am Christian, the person behind the quasar dream. Thanks for your comments! Well the truth is - I am a real enthusiast and I worked for years to afford it. Do you know what dreams are about? I tried this for many many years in my backyard, and then went on and on to build it. Yes, I am an amateur, and an engineer and physicist - out of passion - that's what life is about. And I am lucky to have many friends who helped me on my way.

In 2007, amateur astrophotographers Johannes Schedler and Ken Crawford combined more than 12 hours of exposures through 16" and 20" telescopes to image a high-redshift quasar (http://panther-observatory.com/). The magnitude of the quasar was measured at 24.8. Its redshift is 6.04, the Lyman-α emission of hydrogen,normally at 121.6 nm in the ultraviolet, is redshifted beyond visibility to 855.5 nm. Crawford used the KAF 6303E which has about 30% QE at 850nm. That was a great achievement. Very inspiring.

In order to go beyond that, a further step was necessary.

I used a ProLine E2V CCD47-10-1-109 Deep Depletion Fused Silica CCD Camera. It is a back-illuminated (contrary to front-illuminated, where photon absorption is higher) and has an IR-enhanced spectral response

I used a clear filter in order to get maximum spectral response of the detector which is sensitive up to 1050nm with peak sensitivity of around 90% at 800 nm. That is important because the redshift of the quasar is so large that it is only visible above 900 nm. I was actually concerned that the small window between 900 and 1050 nm would not be sufficient to see the quasar. For example, I tried it with the ASA 16 inch in Australia. The telescope is good for ordinary imaging but it seemed to not give the overall spectral response that was needed. So it took another year of experimenting. So I met the Planewave team and went through the optics in detail and made sure it would match the camera. That effort was worthwhile. A week ago the system was launched in Spain. And to my surprise, after only a few hours, the quasar was visible. I expected weeks. So you may say, a new era for amateurs has come.

If you want to know details on equipment, method...just ask! Glad to help :-)

[troypiggo]

Congratulations on the find and the recognition/records! Well deserved.

[strongmanmike]

I did not intend to sound envious in a negative sense or judgemental Christian, I was just smiling :) at the idea that a physicist/engineer by proffession, using a state of the art and very costly commercially located/operated device in a great location can be called an "amateur" in the true sense of the word as I have known it over the past 30years of my involvement in astronomy - no malice intended, truly :thumbsup:. I think your outfit is to die for and your achievement is monumental for sure and I applaude you! :clap:.

What were the specifications of the camera FLI made for you and what were the filters?

Mike

[Galaxygazer]

Hi Mike, no problem, LOL! OK filters - I used a clear filter with anti-reflection coating with highest transmission so not to lose photons. But - now - the camera does have 2 narrowband filters that are customized. [SIII] 9532A emission line and HeII at 10124 A. That is novel. I did a lot of research to find these. SIII works well and HeII goes deep into nebula so you can see stars! But it takes long exposures to get a good S/N ratio

[Galaxygazer]

And thank you for all the kind and encouraging messages here :D, I really appreciate that. Thank you

[Ric]

Amazing stuff for sure.

Well done Christian. :thumbsup:

[renormalised]

Excellent work!!!!

Serious research should now be possible with equipment such as this. It would be good to see more amateur/professional co-operation in such studies from now on.

[bkm2304]

Yes, good point, Mike. However, I did get to 9.7GLY mag 20. The SBIG has very good near IR sensitivity, so who knows? And what's another 3 GLY among friends?:D

Richard

[bkm2304]

Hi Christian,

Welcome to Ice In Space! Your efforts have us all excited here in the Southern Hemisphere and those of us have had a go at getting really deep are very inspired.

Richard :thumbsup:

[John Hothersall]

Welcome to the Forum, what amatures can achieve now is truely amazing. Hats off to you.

John.

[Galaxygazer]

Thank you, I am thrilled to join this community. You are lucky- the Southern sky is just so much more exciting and unexplored! I grew up partly in South Africa and Namibia and the skies I saw there were so overwhelming. Maybe one day I can get one installed in Australia, who knows. Imaging the Magellanic cloud with extended red sensitivity! Who knows what we could see…there is so much potential for amateurs.

[Ken Crawford]

.

Nicely Done and congrats on the deep image and a great write-up! It is great inspriation to show what can be accomplished.

The quasar that Johannes had me image (and you mentioned and surpassed) was detected in less than 5 hours of exposure with a 6303E chip (pretty red sensitive). Johannes then combined the image with his 16" data to produce the pretty picture but the detection was done in one night from my backyard. He could not detect the Quasar from his site with the STL11k (not very red sensitive).

Here is the link to the 5 hours detection image that was tested. This is the quasar that you just surpassed.

http://www.imagingdeepsky.com/CFHQS_J1641.html

With dark skies and great off the shelf equipment we can go very deep. The astronomers at the Max-Planck institute are measuring our 20" RCOS star streams down to 29 mag sq/arc. This takes about 6 to 9 hours of exposures with a clear filter to get that far.

The fact we own our own equipment means we can sit on a target as long as we want! That is our advantage over the "Pros" !!

Thanks again and a heartly congrats for such fine work.

Kindest Regards,

[strongmanmike]

I remember back in 1978 when the then fairly new 3.9m Anglo Australian Telescope recorded faint pulses of light from the Vela pulsar, PSR 0833-45 which at the time made it the faintest star ever observed at mag 25.2.

Now some 33 years later it can just about be done with a 16" - 20" scope and an off the shelf CCD camera, all be they pretty good ones ;)

The other thing to note here though is that our AAT was then the third largest and perhaps the best telescope in the world at the time and deffinitely a world leader.

Top effort boys, sure beats having to get hold of a 4m telescope and a fair bit less expense :question: :lol: :thumbsup:

Mike

[Galaxygazer]

My thanks to Ken Crawford and his kind message. I got a lot of inspiration from Johannes and him!

I had the image of total exposure time of 16 hours independently reviewed by an expert.

Geir Klingenberg is the developer of VPhot, an astrometric tool for analyzing astro-images.

Geir: The image was plate solved using PinPoint 5.1, and reference stars/galaxies matched and identified from the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database. The quasar J1148+5251 is detected with SNR ~ 7, while the 28.5 g-mag galaxy SDSS J114810.39+524948.6 is detected with SNR ~ 12 in this unfiltered image.


http://www.global-rent-a-scope.com/storage/data-inbox/full%20mag.png

http://www.global-rent-a-scope.com/storage/data-inbox/full%20label.png

[Astroman]

Congratulations on the record, a great achievement. Looking at the image on the link above (first post), there are numerous fainter looking "blobs" on it, are these known galaxies or clumps of background noise? One noticable was one just to the left of the Quasar, shows a slight condensation of either noise or something else. If it is something else, could it be possible that these are even further than the observed Quasar?

[Galaxygazer]

Good point! When I superimposed all the catalogs I could find in Aladin, I was really surprised. There are numerous unidentified objects both brighter and fainter. Would it be worthwhile releasing this image (fits format) for educational and scientific curiosity and to see what comes back? Would that be of interest?

[renormalised]

Yes, then others could go over it and let you know if you've found anything dimmer and further away :)

[Galaxygazer]

That is an interesting point – 5 hours! Seems really short.



So after how many hours does this quasar become visible that is even more distant?


So in my case I have a camera with higher QE in the far red. At the same time the redshift of the quasar is higher, only visible from about 890nm upwards


http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~martini/osmos/j1148_osmos.jpg (http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/%7Emartini/osmos/j1148_osmos.jpg)


Just combining 24 images (2 hours) surprisingly reveals both the Quasar and just a faint indication of the 26.9 (g) galaxy.
Here are screen shots taken from Aladin


First the blank view
http://wiki.global-rent-a-scope.com/GetFile.aspx?File=Share%20an%20Imag e\No%20Label.jpg (http://wiki.global-rent-a-scope.com/GetFile.aspx?File=Share%20an%20Imag e%5CNo%20Label.jpg)


Now two objects of importance (compare to above)


http://wiki.global-rent-a-scope.com/GetFile.aspx?File=Share%20an%20Imag e\2%20Object%20label.jpg (http://wiki.global-rent-a-scope.com/GetFile.aspx?File=Share%20an%20Imag e%5C2%20Object%20label.jpg)


Here an idea of the NED database overlay


http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/

(http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/)
http://wiki.global-rent-a-scope.com/GetFile.aspx?File=Share%20an%20Imag e\Full%20label.jpg (http://wiki.global-rent-a-scope.com/GetFile.aspx?File=Share%20an%20Imag e%5CFull%20label.jpg)


Notes:
The noise level in the above images is relatively high. I just took 24 images at random. These may have been “lucky picks” and thus not representative. There may be errors although the quasar is clearly visible, so are most objects from NED.



It seems prudent to release images and calibration files for review; I welcome open discussions and especially improvements in data mining.


Here the telescope data:
TELESCOP = 'ACP->GRAS-017 CDK 17 IR' / Telescope name INSTRUME = 'FLI-New ' / Detector instrument name
DATE-OBS = '2011-02-03T23:37:06' / [ISO 8601] UTC date/time of exposure start EXPOSURE = 3.00000000000E+002 / [sec] Duration of exposure
SET-TEMP = -45.000000000000000 /CCD temperature setpoint in C
XPIXSZ = 13.000000000000002 /Pixel Width in microns (after binning) YPIXSZ = 13.000000000000002 /Pixel Height in microns (after binning)
XBINNING = 1 / Binning level along the X-axis YBINNING = 1 / Binning level along the Y-axis
FILTER = 'Clear ' / Filter name
CSTRETCH = 'Medium ' / Initial display stretch mode
CBLACK = 3063 /Initial display black level in ADUs CWHITE = 5288 /Initial display white level in ADUs
PEDESTAL = -100 /Correction to add for zero-based ADU
SWOWNER = 'Christian Sasse'
AIRMASS = 1.26807635376E+000 / Airmass (multiple of zenithal airmass)
OBSERVAT = 'G17 - Sasse Deep Red Telescope' / Observatory name
RA = '11 48 17.00' / [hms J2000] Target right ascension DEC = '+52 51 50.0' / [dms +N J2000] Target declination
SHISTORY Bias Subtraction (Bias 1, 1056 x 1027, Bin1 x 1, Temp -45C,
HISTORY Dark-Bias(Bias 1,1056 x 1027,Bin1 x 1,Temp -45C,Exp Time 0ms) HISTORY Flat Field (Flat Clear 1, Clear, 1056 x 1027, Bin1 x 1, Temp -45C,
SNAPSHOT = 24 /Number of images combined

[Galaxygazer]

OK - What is best - Just the deep image or basically all images so that independent reviews are possible? I am open!

[Galaxygazer]

The combined image can be downloaded at http://tinyurl.com/6la4ajz (http://tinyurl.com/6la4ajz)
It consists of 199 stacked images of 300s, see Fits header for details. The image is astrometrically calibrated for use with relevant software.

Enjoy! Looking forward to feedback.

[bkm2304]

Hi Christian,

Just tried to open the file in CCDOPS but it says it's not recognisable as a data file that can be read.

Any suggestions?

Richard.

[Galaxygazer]

I do not know about CCDOPS. It should open in MaximDl or CCDStack, did you try that?

[bkm2304]

D'Oh! Opened first time! Thanks!

Richard

[Galaxygazer]

If you have time and energy, this topic was discussed at AstronomyFM Coronas and Quasars, including astronomer Carolin Liefke http://tinyurl.com/3b3zmj2