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Re: (IAAC) Einsteins Cross

the postion I have put its right on top of CGCG 378-15. There does seem to
be some postional discrepancy according to the PGC and where the galaxy is
on the DSS ( at least as measured from the southern sky part) Which could
explain your problem. I believe that Barbara Wilson and Larrry Mitchell may
have seen this object visually during TSP a few years back with the 36"

t 21:37 26/10/98 -0500, you wrote:
>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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