Brightest Known Double Quasar

The newly discovered 16-magnitude double quasar HE 1104-1805 AB is the object at the centre of this CCD image, obtained by Dieter Reimers and collaborators at the ESO New Technology Telescope on May 11, 1993. Component A is the brighter of the two (lower) and B is the fainter (upper). The distance between the two objects is 3.0 arcseconds. This image is a composite of three 200-second exposures through a red filtre. The seeing conditions were mediocre.

The bright object to the left is probably a galactic star. The diffuse, faint object which is seen South-West (below and right) of the quasar is a 21-magnitude galaxy. It is. too far away to be the "lensing" galaxy which��may have caused the splitting of the quasar image. It may be a member of a distant cluster of galaxies of which another is just South-East of the stellar image.
The pixel size is 0.4 arcseconds. North is up and East is to the left