QSO 1425+606: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Distant

by Dick Flasck

Often at public star parties someone will ask me, "How far can you see with that telescope?" In years past, I would try to explain the subtle complexity and vague ambiguity of that unsettling question. About five years ago the realization finally struck me that it was, indeed, an entirely valid question, and I decided to seek the answer. Thus began my focus on hunting down quasars. Ray Cash and Steve Gottlieb provided invaluable help as I began my quest.

In 1999, I posted an observing report on QSO 1946+769, a mag 16 quasar in Draco with a red shift of 3.05. Depending on the cosmological model, that puts it at a distance of about 11 billion light years. I had searched for other farther candidates without success, and concluded that this quasar was likely the farthest object I would ever see through my scope. I am now happy to report that I was wrong.

THE GOOD:

It turns out that quasars are on the cutting edge of astronomy. New data is being collected and published all the time. Last month, my frequent fellow observer, David (Doc) Silva, found a quasar listed in SkyTools that was not in my older MegaStar database, nor in any of the lists I had culled from various sources a few years back. David's find was QSO 1425+606, a mag 16 quasar in Draco with a red shift of 3.2. An internet search confirmed the SkyTools data. QSO 1425 is ideally placed at this time of year.

Our first attempt on 7/14/04 failed. We planned for 7/17/04, the new moon, but the weather turned bad. Prime time was running out for this year, and that was a worry.

David and I decided to try 7/20/04. The moon set at 10:45 pm on that Tuesday. The night was near perfect for this attempt.

THE BAD:

We arrived at the usual observing site, Lone Rock in Lake Sonoma, CA at 8:00 pm. The sun was to set at about 8:30 pm. I immediately went to unload my equatorial platform / ground board combination, only to find I had left it back at home, 2.5 hours away. A few colorful phrases were employed.

David has a very fine 14" StarMaster. I thought, however, that the extra few inches of my scope might make or break our effort that evening.

THE UGLY:

A US astronaut (I've forgotten which one), when asked what he would do if his ship was about to explode in 10 seconds, answered something like, "Think really hard for 9 seconds and then act." That had always made sense to me.

A quick inventory was taken. I had to McGiver together a ground board, in the field, in less than 30 minutes, with various scraps of available material and hardware, a screwdriver and a pocketknife. Realizing the hopelessness of my situation, David was supportively, politely, and empathetically quiet while I stewed.

At 8:15pm I began boring holes with the Uncle Henry pocketknife in the plywood seat of my StarMaster chair / stepstool (recommended to me by Ray Cash several years ago). A couple of pieces of ABS plastic (normally used as shims to level the equatorial platform) were screwed to the seat as my "teflon" pads. The center pivot was a 3/8" bolt I found in the bottom of my eyepiece box. The bolt was brought to the larger necessary diameter by applying several wraps of electrical tape David happened to have. Three suitable rocks were found around the gravel parking lot, and placed directly between the ground and the back of the seat / ground board, directly under the ABS pads (which were, of course, on the upper side of the seat / ground board). Ugly....... really ugly.

The cradle went on the ground board; the mirror box went in the cradle; the truss tubes and upper cage completed the scope. Well, it did not track like my platform. The alt bearing was a bit sticky. All in all, it worked pretty well.

THE DISTANT:

I had printed out detailed star charts for starhopping, along with the DSS photo of the field that contained the QSO. The star Thuban in Draco was the starting point. Five eyepiece fields later, I had the target field of view. There is an unmistakable star pattern consisting of two mag 11 stars bracketing the QSO, and three close, mag 15 stars pointing right at the QSO.

With the 11 mm Nagler, the QSO popped in and out of view, being visible with averted vision about 30% of the time. With the 4.8 mm Nagler, it could be held with direct vision about 50% of the time, and with averted vision, more than 80% of the time. There were some long, satisfying spans of 15 seconds or more when the QSO just sat there shining away. Of course, it just appeared as a dim star. My brightness estimate is about mag 15.5, a bit brighter than the published value. As it turned out, this QSO was also visible in David's StarMaster.

It's not eye candy like M13. It's head candy. It's not just pre-solar light. It's pre-Milky Way light. Those photons were launched 11.5 billion years ago, from unimaginable violence near the very edge of the observable universe, just to tickle our retinas that night. WOOOWHOOOO!

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Posted on sf-bay-tac Jul 25, 2004 08:34:27 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 04, 2005 22:42:36 PT