Two more newly discovered quadruply-imaged quasars

Today I saw on arXiv this paper

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.02674.pdf

announcing two quadruply-imaged quasars. The abstract of the paper mentions "the serendipitous discovery of about a dozen galaxies that appear to be lensing quasars, i.e. pairs or quartets of foreground stellar objects in close proximity to the target source" but the paper only is about two of them since they happen to be diamond shaped. I'll contact the authors to ask if they can make available the other discoveries as well.

The first quasar is named 2M1134–2103 and two 2MASS sources are named to be part of it: 2MASS J11344050–2103230 and 2MASS J11344059–2103220. Both are present in VizieR and are listed there to have J (infrared) magnitudes 14.740 and 15.179. The paper gives an image and ATLAS i magnitudes plus i-r and g-r values taken from the PANSTARRS PS1 survey (https://confluence.stsci.edu/display...ter+properties) which bring the g magnitudes in the 16.5 range.

The second quasar is named 2M1310–1714 with one known @MASS source 2MASX J13102004-1714578. VizieR gives the J magnitude of 15.097. The paper gives an image on page 3 and magnitudes and color indices on page 6. The g magnitude seems to be in the 19.5 range.

Please note that I reformatted the source names to comply with the Simbad naming conventions. Both sources are located in the spring sky and at reasonably low declinations for observers in the northern hemisphere. But still, the first quasar may be doable by observers with telescopes of, say, 16" and up while the second one may be a challenge even for Jimi's 48" telescope.

As always, give it a go and let us know :)


Clear skies, Wouter