This one isn't pretty, but it's deep.

When I started the Leo Triplet CI, I originally had something else in mind than what I ended up with. The idea I started with, was to test the deep field capabilities of Crowd Sourced Astro Imaging. Leo Triplet is an excellent target for that. It has a large dark field in the middle, and to frame the triplet, that dark field ends up in the centre of the CCD. With more than 500 hours exposure that should add up.

While working with the image I became distracted by NGC3628, and ended up with the Triplet in RGB, with a field that was too dark.

Tonight I started over, and decided to find some quasars

I extracted a luminance from the raw stack of the 168 images used. Then I inverted that to negative, gamma stretched it and after a bit of googling I "learned how to use Simbad and Aladin". Wow! I wish I had seen those before. A bit scientific, and not very user friendly, but PixInsight makes you pretty tolerant towards that.

I made a Simbad search for QSOs (Quasi Stellar Objects) and found quite a few around NGC3628, so I went back to the galaxy

Simbad doesn't show Apparent Magnitude. At least I haven't figured it out yet, but it shows something called Flux resembling AM. I chose the one that I think is b for blue.

At the other hand Simbad does show redshift Z value for quasars.

In the image above, I've been able to identify six quasars, and 3 candidates. The one called QSO B1118+1352 has z=2.43 b=21.2, making it by far the furthest object I've identified in any image I've worked with so far (except for HUDF).

It's the most distant known quasar I could identify in the field of the image above. The image covers a good part of distance of The Visible Universe. As far as I can read from curves more than 12 billion ly.

QSO B1118+1352 seems to be obscured by the outer parts of NGC3628 but some of the other z>2 QSOs are more visible, and it's possible to see quite a bit fainter objects than those in the image.

Image Credits (Thanks for sharing!

Adam Evans, Alvinillo, Angel Requena, Anton, Armelle & Eric, AstroGabe, AstroGG, Astroluc63, Ben Browning, Bob Familiar, budman1961, Cano Vääri, Carsten Frenzl, chripell, Cobbler, Cody Garges, Creedence, David L Milligan, Eduardo Mariño, Eric Gorski, Ferran Ginebrosa, Flavastro, fragro, FranckIM06, Fred Locklear, Fredrik Ödling, Fryns, geco71, Gerardo Blanco, harbinjer, Heiko Günther, Hewholooks, jdiwnab, John Bowles, Jorge A. Loffler, jpstanley, Juan Lozano, Jürgen Kemmerer, Jussi Kantola, Ken_Lord, Ljubinko Jovanovic, Luca Argalia, M.W.Hoy, Marc Van Norden, Marcelo Domingues, Matthew, Maxvlt, Miodrag Sekulic, Morten Balling, NicolasP, PaulHutchinson, Pavel (sypai) Syrin, pbkwee, pbkwee, Pete Collins, Peter Williamson, pfile, Phillip Seeber, Ram Viswanathan, Rhett Herring, Richie Jarvis, RIKY, Rob Glover, Roberto Ferrero, s58y, Salvatore Iovene, Salvopa, samuele, Sendell, Serge, Shane Poage, Stephen Rahn, Steve Elliott, Steve Yan, stevebryson, Surfus_1980, theilr, Tim, Tom Harrison, Vincent Bhm, Wayne Young, zemt-fr.