Remote quasars brighter than mag 15 visible from northern latitudes. The point of observing a quasar with amateur equipment is not to make out any detail all that is visible is a faint dot which one struggles very hard to discern at all. Instead, the challenge lies in positively identifying the object, and in marvelling at its huge distance and at the amazing physics and prodigious energy consumption involved in rendering it visible at all. The light that we observe as 3C273 began its journey almost 2 billion years ago. The high angle of the Sun in figure 1 makes it difficult to discern particular craters.
Quasar is a contraction of quasi-stellar object .