In The Cambridge Photographic Atlas of Galaxies, English Edition 2017, there is a section that addresses active objects including Quasars.  It inspired me to image these two at RA 12h 18m 41s and Dec +50 degrees 15' 36" to see if I could image such distant objects (see red circle in center.)  You probably can too.  There is something very cool about capturing light that has been traveling for 10.7 Billion years.

Quasars are highly luminous in the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum and are the very bright active nuclei of distant galaxies.   Only the quasi-stellar, bright core region of the galaxy is visible, since due to the great distance the dim outer regions are very faint or not visible at all.  More than 1 million quasars have been detected.  They have at their center a super-,massive black hole with a mass of up to tens of billions of solar masses and emit as much light as a thousand or more galaxies.  

Quoting from the Atlas:  "At the center of the image are two close, star-like objects (see circle). These are the components A and B of the double quasar HS 1216+5032.  The right A component at 17.2 Mag is brighter than the B component at 19.0 mag 9.1" to the left in the image.  The seldom used catalogue designation HS1216+5032 refers to the Hamburg/ESO QSO Survey which was compiled at the Hamburg Observatory in the mid-1990s with the purpose of verifying quasar candidates.  During the study of the optical spectra of HS 1216+5032A/B, astronomers found almost identical spectra and a redshift of z=1.455.  This results in a cosmological distance of 10.7 billion light years and a projected distance of about 260,000 light years."  

The images for these studies were taken with the 0.8m Schmidt telescope on Calar Alto in Spain.  Further spectroscopic work was accomplished using the German Spanish 2.2 m telescope (also on Calar Alto).

"The possibility that HS 1216+5032 is due to a strong gravitational-lens effect can be ruled out based on comparison of the spectra of the components.  Both spectra show prominent emission lines of ionized carbon and magnesium (C IV, C III, Mg II). In spite of this similarity, the spectra display differences: the spectrum of the B component is redder and shows a strong C IV absorption line in the blue wing of the C IV emission line.  This absorption is due to a molecular cloud which is close to one of the quasars; the other quasar is not covered by the cloud.  While the B component is radio-loud, the A component emits almost no radio emission.  Also, there are no features which are visible first in the light of one component then after a time delay in the light of the other.  HS 1216-5032 is thus very probably a double quasar consisting of two especially active, interacting members of a distant galaxy cluster."