I was browsing Cloudy Nights, as I do, and someone mentioned a quasar that they had discovered in their image of M51. I took a few hours of data on M51 last weekend, and I’ve been playing around with it in PixInsight while waiting for clear nights to get more data. And, by goodness, I found this quasar in my data!
This quasar was almost 12 billion light years away from us. The light from this quasar took almost the entire life of the universe to reach the piece of Pyrex in my backyard and some pixels in my camera sensor. This quasar is receding away from us at almost three times the speed of light. It is absolutely astonishing to me that I can capture such an object with cheap equipment in my backyard. I’m definitely on the hunt for more now.
