HB89 0957+561 (aka QSO 0957+561) Lensed quasar (lowenthalm)

HB89 0957+561 (aka QSO 0957+561) Lensed quasar

The first gravitationally lensed quasar pair, discovered in 1979, has multiple designations. I think the most common is QSO 0957+561. It can be found just 10 arcminutes north of NGC 3079. The pair is near the center of this field, widely separated by 6.1 arc seconds and are around magnitude 16.7. If you look closely, you can see one is slightly dimmer than the other. Their brightness varies synchronously, since they are images of the same object, but out of phase from one another by 417 days. This means the light path for one of the images around the lensing galaxy is about 1.3 light years longer than the light path of the other image over their distance from us of 9.7 billion light years (bly)! The lensing galaxy between them is too faint to be picked up in this image (I don't own the Hubble Space Telescope!), although several other faint PGCs are visible in this fairly deep image.

Directly below the quasar(s) and slightly to the left is PGC 2517881, a 17.5 magnitude spiral galaxy roughly 1.1 bly away.

PGC 5428121 can just be detected about half way from PGC 2517881 to the left edge of the frame. Its the dimmest PGC catalogue galaxy in the field at magnitude 20.6. Its estimated distance is 5.8 bly! Try switching to the inverse negative view if you have trouble spotting it.

Then continuing over from there to the far left edge you can see the much brighter 17.6 magnitude spiral galaxy PGC 2515812. Its estimated to be 1.2 bly distant from us.

The image was obtained from my fairly light polluted backyard at the norther edge of Vancouver, WA.

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Status	Advanced failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	1995439
PixInsight job	10RDPR1AE0S24K24MHBKH55IKEMK9ERS
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	PLATE_SOLVING_IMAGE

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HB89 0957+561 (aka QSO 0957+561) Lensed quasar

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