“How far can you see with that thing?”
It’s a common question overhead at many public star parties in reference to telescopes.
In the coming weeks as the Moon passes Full and moves out of the evening sky, we’d like to challenge you to hunt down a bright example of one of the most distant and exotic objects known: a quasar.
To carry out this feat, you’ll need a ‘scope with at least an aperture of 20 centimetres or greater, dark skies, and patience.
Although more than 200,000 of quasars are currently known and they’re some of the most luminous objects in the universe, they’re also tremendously distant. A very few are brighter than magnitude +14, about the brightness of Pluto. Most quasars have an absolute magnitude rivaling our Sun, though if you plopped one down 33 light years away, we’d definitely have other things to worry about.
Continue reading “Peer Into the Distant Universe: How to See Quasars With Backyard Telescopes”