The twin lensed Quasar 8C 0958 + 561 can be found in the Big Dipper. In the centre of the picture we can see NGC 3079 50 million ly away from us with a massive black hole 2,4 x 106 Mo . At the top of the picture lays the twin Quasar 8C 0958+ 561 magnitude 16,7 with a redshift z = 1,41 which gives a distance of 8,7 billion light years. An unbelievable distance at the time the light was send away our solar system and our Sun did not even exist.The twin quasar was discovered by Walsh, Carswell and Weyman in 1979 using the 2100 mm reflector from Kit Peak Observatory in Arizona. They noticed the two Quasars were unbelievably close together. In front of the Quasar lies a lensing galaxy at a redshift of z = 0,355 (3,7 billion ly). The twin Quasar was one of the first directly observable effects of gravitational lensing described in 1936 by Albert Einstein as a consequence of his General Theory of Relativity. I was actually amazed I could photograph
this out of my light polluted Bortle 6 back garden.
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