Yes, you can. While people tend to focus on pretty pictures like the M42 (by the way, if you just got your S50, you live in the northern hemisphere and have not taken pictures like this yet, then hurry up, it will not last much longer and then you will have to wait until November to catch it again):
By the way, ZWO, when can we stop using "poor man's mosaic" and get the real thing?
But this post is about quasars, so can you really see one with the S50? Yes, even from light polluted Toronto. In the center of the white circle is Markarian 231, aka UGC 8058. You can find more information about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markarian_231
There is no post processing of FITS files or anything, this is actually a screenshot taken directly from the phone, after a 15 minutes acquisition I did last night:
Can you find it with SkyAtlas? No, but it is there. If you want to try the capture yourself, the bread crumb trail is search in SkyAtlas for Alioth, a major Big Dipper star, then next to it you will see 78 Ursae Majoris, which is the "bright" star at the bottom of my screen shot, then use my image as a guide to find the quasar. Depending on where you are and what time it is, your image might be rotated. If ZWO would implement a trivial RA/Dec GoTo feature we would not have to jump through all these hoops to share the coordinates of an interesting object in the sky. If you are curious, the RA/Dec coordinates for Markarian 231 are 12h57m18.7s/+56deg44min19.9sec, magnitude 13.81, 581Mly away, it is the closest known quasar to us, easily visible from anywhere in the northern hemisphere. The fact that you can do this with a 50mm aperture instrument and a 15 minute exposure from a heavily light polluted area just blows my mind.
For those that doubt this is possible, here is a zoom in of the same file captured with the S50 and Stellarium attempts to virtually recreate the two shots, I think there is no doubt this is indeed Markarian 231:
If you live in the southern hemisphere, do not despair, I have a proposal for you. If you are willing to take a capture of the just announced J0529-4351 "brightest and hungriest black hole ever detected" that is making the news lately, I am willing to exchange my FITS files of the Markarian 231 with you. And with any other S50 user interested, of course. Stay tuned, details to follow soon.
