Right ascension 02 09 41.27 Constellation Cetus | Declination +00° 15′ 58.48″ | |
Redshift 6999202000000000000♠0.202±0.00006 Helio radial velocity 249.1 ± 17.7 km/s (154.8 ± 11.0 mi/s) Distance 2 and 10 Gly (610 and 3,070 Mpc) People also search for Upsilon1 Ceti, Phi3 Ceti | ||
9Spitch, officially designated ASW0009io9, is a gravitationally lensed system of two galaxies. The nearer galaxy is approximately 2 billion light-years (610 Mpc) from Earth, while the lensed galaxy is 10 billion light-years (3.1 Gpc) distant. It was discovered in January 2014 by Zbigniew "Zbish" Chetnik, an amateur astronomer from Northamptonshire, England, while classifying images on the website Spacewarps.org. The discovery was announced on the BBC television programme Stargazing Live.
The term Spitch comes from Chetnik's nickname Zbish, after a BBC producer misheard his nickname. Stargazing Live host Brian Cox supported the name 9Spitch over other suggestions as it would "highlight amateur astronomy".
References
9Spitch Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA