The dot was faint - barely detectable, and one of the most boring sights glimpsed through the eyepiece of my 12.5” reflecting telescope. (This is a moderately large instrument for a casual observer, but still firmly in the amateur realm.)
It resembled a gnat buzzing around two dim field stars, a tiny point of light. Back in the day, they thought it a variable star in our own galaxy, “only” a few thousand light years away, fluctuating in brightness through the blackness.
“Ah HA!” Excitedly checking my charts…yep, this was it! “Markarian 421!” Glimmering from a depth of at least 360 million light years away, an unseen (to me) elliptical galaxy’s dark heart lashes out at the cosmos. A supermassive black hole at the center of this galaxy creates a giant accretion disc. Relativistic Jets form perpendicular to this disc, ejecting plasma at nearly the speed of light - an incredible output of energy.
As I peered into my eyepiece here on Earth, I was looking straight down the throat of one of these jets. Hear it roar! Err…imagine it roar. It’s called a Blazar. It was pretty cool to see. It’s the farthest I’ve ever observed in space, and I can’t wait to try for more. Apparently, there’s one lurking around in range of my scope that’s 3.5 billion light years away. (He wasn’t cooperative, though, and while perhaps I saw a dim smudge when I looked, I’ll need a better finder chart.)
After looking at a few “normal” galaxies, an unidentified truck lumbered up the long driveway, ruining my night vision and raising my suspicions. “Get off my lawn!” Turns out it was just the power company guy here to look at a broken feed to one of the buildings. He was showing me how everything worked (what a fascinating topic), and even stopped by the scope to look at the Orion Nebula and crescent moon. “Sorry to mess up your stargazing, man.” “Nah, not at all.” There’s intriguing stuff everywhere, from cores of galaxies screaming across the eons, to the mystery of broken wires here on our own planet. What a delight to observe it all!
(Here’s two links for my fellow backyard space travelers):
http://washedoutastronomy.com/washedoutastronomy.com/content/fist-full-quasars/index.html
https://observing.skyhound.com/archives/mar/Markarian_421.html