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(IAAC) Einsteins Cross
Hello Everyone
I wonder if anyone has some knowledge of the gravitational lens known
as Einsteins Cross. I have an opportunity to do some ccd imaging with a
very accomplished amateur astronomer in my area by the name of Paul
Boltwood. Paul does a lot of work in the area of photometry but since he
invited me to come and do some "pretty pictures" at his observatory and
suggested that I come up with some potential objects to observe I
thought ok what would I like to see that is at the limit of what can be
seen visually. Then I happened upon a website hosted by Jim Shields
called Adventures in Deep Space http://www.angelfire.com/id/jsredshift/
this site is dedicated to the fine points of deep sky observing, in
their section entitled Ultimate challenges I found mention of an object
I had heard of before by the name of Einsteins Cross and I thought this
would be an interesting target since it is at the limit of what amateurs
can hope to view during peak conditions with very large aperture. The
angelfire page gives the coordinates RA 22hrs 40' 29.8" Dec +3 21'
30"(2000) but upon checking the DSS image of this area a small spiral is
visible but no hint of the lensed quasar which has a mag of 16.8. The
guide star catalog of Pauls as well as my Skymap Pro show that the
galaxy that is lensing the quasar (cgcg 378-15 or pcg 69457 mag 15.1) is
at a position about 2.5 arcminutes away from the coordinates given by
Rich Jakiel at the webpage. So we're wondering what exactly are the
coordinates of this object just so we don't spend hours imaging the
wrong galaxy. The object should be an easy target for a ccd camera given
that the seeing is fairly decent. The website gives no indication as to
the image scale of the Cross so if anyone has any experience with this
interesting object any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks in advance
Michael Wirths (Ottawa Chapter of the RASC)
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