Hi Dick,
Great report!
I can just see you out there, hunting 11.5 bly QSOs, on the rickety side.
Amazing what you can do with three rocks, a bit of wood, a couple of
shims and a chunk of fused silica...
congratulations,
Robert.
>Observing report: QSO 1425+606 - The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and
>the Distant
>Date : July 20, 2004
>Location: Lake Sonoma, CA
>
>Darkness: Mag 6.5+ at the zenith
>Transparency: good
>Seeing: a bit mushy
>
>Equipment:
>17.5" f/4.1 Homebrew Dob with Discovery primary mirror.
>Eyepieces: 32mm TeleVue Plossl, 11 mm Nagler, 4.8 mm Nagler
>
>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!
>
>Dick Flasck
-- -- Robert Leyland, r.leyland@verizon.net Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow!Received on Sun Jul 25 08:42:44 2004