Quasar in Lynx

This is by far the most distant and intrinsically brightest object I have ever imaged, and it may be difficult to beat it. The redshift of this quasar (z = 3.91) suggests that it is about 12.1 billion light years away. Based on the current estimate that the age of the universe since the big bang is 13.8 billion years, this object is almost 90% of the way to the edge of the visible universe. (Anything farther away than 13.8 billion light years cannot be visible because its light has not reached us yet.)

Observations with large telescopes show that the brightness of this quasar has been enhanced by gravitational lensing, due to a massive object (a galaxy?) directly in our line of sight. Even taking this lensing into account, however, the quasar is estimated to be about 1 quadrillion times brighter than our Sun, making it one of the most luminous objects yet discoved.

APM 08279+5255 has a very red appearance in this image, helping to identify it from among the foreground stars. At a magnitude of about 15.2, it can be barely seen through the eyepiece of large amateur telescopes. Below is a close-up of the region around this quasar, which shows several small dim galaxies.

Image details: Exposure times of 16 minutes luminance and 12 minutes each of red, green and blue, taken with an SBIG ST-8300M imager and a 14" Meade LX850 telescope at f/6. 

April 2019