KP77 - Quasar
The quasar "KP77" lies in the constellation Draco. Its redshift is z = 2.511, which corresponds to a light travel time of 11.2 billion years. Its current distance
is 19.6 billion light-years, which makes it one of the most distant quasars that can be seen in an amateur telescope. The speed at which the quasar is moving
away from us is 255,000 km/s, or 85% of the speed of light.
The apparent visual brightness is given as 17.1mag, but the quasar can reach up to 16.5mag at maximum. This would correspond to an absolute magnitude
of M= -26.1mag, the luminosity of 2.4 trillion suns. One may not imagine how it would be in the close vicinity of such an object.
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The quasar is one of the difficult objects to observe even with a 20" telescope under dark sky. In the eyepiece a prominent asterism in a star-rich environment
makes it easier to locate the exact position.
But even at 270x the QSO could only be seen after a few minutes as an extremely faint star, which flashed out of the dark sky background every now and then.
An exciting, but also challenging object.
