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. 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 :-)