Gravitationally-lensed quasar APM 08279+5255 (red-shift z = 3.911 = 12 billion light yrs) (Pam Whitfield)

Gravitationally-lensed quasar APM 08279+5255 (red-shift z = 3.911 = 12 billion light yrs)

Being the curious type after the Owl Nebula crop I did a little background reading and found this object that even has its own Wikipedia page. It's a gravitationally lensed quasar which means it's fairly bright at magnitude +15.2 in the constellation Lynx but has a red-shift of 3.911 equating to a light travel time of 12.1 billion light years, the object currently being over 23 billion light years away!

So I spent a few hours with my scope collecting photons from a pretty plain-looking bit of sky. Even with a few RGB subs it's not a picturesque region so I've made it a simple negative of the stacked luminance to make it easier to spot.

There happen to be two other fairly bright quasars in the field of view, QSO J08310+5325 with a red-shift of 2.06 and QSO J08328+5256 with a relatively pedestrian red shift of 0.79

I removed the IDAS LPS-P2 filter to avoid cutting some of the brighter portions of it's spectra but that might not have been necessary.....

Amazing to think that I could detect these things at unimaginable distances from my backyard with a modest setup

Curiosity satisfied I think it's back to pretty stuff!

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Status	Basic failed
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Astrometry.net job	4412869
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