Hubble's 100,000th Exposure

[Glima49]

Of an anonymous quasar next to a star, and some other galaxies. I can't find any information on what is the ID of this quasar: does anyone know?
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9625a/

[Ann]

Of an anonymous quasar next to a star, and some other galaxies. I can't find any information on what is the ID of this quasar: does anyone know?
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9625a/

No idea what the name of the quasar is, sorry. I would guess that it is a rather "typical" quasar. Nine billion years ago star formation in the universe was near its peak, and many black holes where hungrily feeding and brilliantly blasting forth light.

I like the interacting galaxy pair at top. The galaxy at right looks like a very well-formed, typical spiral galaxy, but the galaxy at left looks squashed up against the larger one. The two galaxies don't look as if they have merged at all.

Ann

[Chris Peterson]

I wonder what that number means. 100,000 seems too small for total exposures, given all the subframes that can go into a single project. The 100,000th light frame? The 100,000th discrete target?

[bystander]

I wonder what that number means. 100,000 seems too small for total exposures, given all the subframes that can go into a single project. The 100,000th light frame? The 100,000th discrete target?

July 18, 1996: The Hubble telescope reached a milestone several years sooner than scientists expected when it snapped its 100,000th exposure June 22, 1996. The six-year-old orbiting observatory has averaged 1,389 exposures a month, an amount that would make any photographer envious.

This black-and-white picture represents the telescope's 100,000th exposure: a quasar that resides about 9 billion light-years from Earth. The quasar is the bright object in the center of the photo. The fainter object just above it is an elliptical galaxy. Although the two objects appear to be close together, they are actually separated by about 2 billion light-years.

[Chris Peterson]

I wonder what that number means. 100,000 seems too small for total exposures, given all the subframes that can go into a single project. The 100,000th light frame? The 100,000th discrete target?

July 18, 1996: The Hubble telescope reached a milestone several years sooner than scientists expected when it snapped its 100,000th exposure June 22, 1996. The six-year-old orbiting observatory has averaged 1,389 exposures a month, an amount that would make any photographer envious.

Yeah, but I'm still not sure what that means. Are calibration and test frames "exposures"? There are often several of those for each light frame.

[saturno2]

I don´t Know but the Hubble 100,000 Exposure
is not in my screen. Rare thing, indeed !!

[geckzilla]

The RA/Dec for this observation is 12:44:13.31 17:20:42.7 and the target is listed as Q1241, 1241 just being shorthand for its RA coordinate location. It is indeed a rather anonymous quasar.

[Ron-Astro Pharmacist]

I was curious about the current redshift record holder when wondering how they knew the distance for these quasars. It appears they are getting warmer.

[Glima49]

Thanks geck. I was quite close to mailing STScI. The quasar is QSO J1244+1721, located 9 billion light years away in the constellation Coma Berenices.

[geckzilla]

You can use the Hubble Legacy Archive to find most anything you'd want to know about any press release that is lacking in coordinates or information. For this you can put 0 0 180° for the position (Advanced options turned on) and select WFPC2 for the instrument. After the result set is loaded it's just a matter of limiting the Start Time column to 1996-06-22*
http://hla.stsci.edu/hlaview.html