Earth's Birthday Star (Quasar HS 0624 +6907) (Scott Denning)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Camelopardalis (Cam)

Earth's Birthday Star (Quasar HS 0624 +6907), Scott Denning

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Earth's Birthday Star (Quasar HS 0624 +6907)

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Earth's Birthday Star (Quasar HS 0624 +6907)

For Christmas, I took a picture of a star shining on the day of my kiddo's birth. Kind of Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday at the same time, in a weird, relativistic way! So I got to thinking, if we can do this for a person why not the whole world?

The tiny blue dot at the dead center of this image is the quasar HS 0624+6907, imaged at the precise time of the formation of the Earth, 4.56 billion years ago.

It has a lookback time that's equal to the age of the Earth. We literally look back in time 4.56 billion years to the formation of the Earth, Sun, and the rest of the solar system when we gaze at the little blue dot. It's older than the hills! It's older than dirt!

It's a very dim 14th-magnitude "star" in the inconspicuous constellation Camelopardalis, not far from the Big Dipper. Camelopardalis is so obscure that I don't even know how to find it in the sky. Some people say it's supposed to be a giraffe, but I think the name translates as something more like "camel-goat."

Anyway, HS 0624+6907 circles Polaris over my garage on cold February nights, and it's so freaking far away it's the Earth's Birthday Star! If you were at a nice dark rural site on a very clear winter night and had a reasonable size telescope (and knew EXACTLY where to look), you could see HS 0624+6907 in the eyepiece rather than just photograph it.

157x15s through each of R,G,B filters with ASI 1600

C8 EdgeHD with f7 reducer on 10Micron GM1000 mount guided with OAG & ASI 174 mini

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Astrometry.net job	4233915
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Earth's Birthday Star (Quasar HS 0624 +6907)

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