I knew the existance of Quasars but I never thought I could see them with my own telescoop. I found an interesting and very recent article on Sky&Telescoop : Twinkle, Twinkle, Quasi-Star - 12 Quasars for Spring evenings - see this link.
After reading the article I was convinced that I at least should try to find some of the mentioned Quasars. As described, a Quasar, or Quasi-Stellar Object (QSO) is seen as a star but in reality it is a galaxy with a huge black hole at the center. The black hole can have a mass, billions of time more then our sun and outshines it's own galaxy.
The first Quasar discoverd is 3C 273 located in constellation Virgo. With a magnitude of 12,9 it should be possible to find it with my 8" telescoop. First I enabled the QSO objects in stellarium and I made sure the telescope was perfectly alligned. A bahtinov mask was used to get real sharp pictures. Images were taken and compared with the charts from the article in S&T. And yes, there it was....... 3C 273 located at a distance of 2.5 billion light years away from Earth. And this from my own backgarden, amazing!
Next to Virgo is constellation Leo with Quasar PG1116+215. More difficult to find and after editing I verified my observation using the Simbad Astronomical database. This Quasar PG 1116+215 is about 2,3 billion light years away from Earth.
Next I started searching for Quasar HS 0624+6907 in constellation Camelopardalis. It took me a lot of time and effort to find this Quasor. Finaly, after 180° rotating the image I could spot the Quasar HS 0624+6907 as a very weak "star" with magnitude 14. This Quasar is located at a distance of 4,56 billion light years away from Earth.
To conclude, It's possible to see Quasars yourself using an 8" telescoop and knowing you see objects at a distance of 4,56 billion light years away. Try this at home :)
All pictures taken with Nikon D7500 and TAL 200K/f/8.5. Setting ISO6400 and exposure of 60s each. Stacking with DeepSkyStacker and final editing in CS4. The mount was connected to Stellarium and the camera controlled by DigiCamControl.
