APM 08279+5255
LENSED · SCHWARZSCHILD FROM ACCRETION QUASAR · INCLINATION NOT MEASURED
OVERVIEW
] BLACK HOLEAPM 08279+5255 is a in the constellation Lynx, 112.1 from Earth. It was discovered in 1998.
One of the most luminous objects known, and magnified several times over by a gravitational lens. The gas around it holds the largest reservoir of water vapour ever detected — enough to be quoted in units of Earth's oceans, and the count runs to a hundred trillion of them.
- WHAT IT IS
- Quasar
- HOW FAR
- 112.1
A luminosity distance, from its redshift — how faint it looks. The light itself left 11.8 billion years ago.
OBSERVING
] FROM WHERE YOU AREWhat it takes to see APM 08279+5255 for yourself. Everything in this part of the page is worked out for a real horizon, a real night and the equipment you say you have.
Say where you are, and this line says when APM 08279+5255 is worth going out for.
APPARENT PLACE
] EQUINOX J2026.7Where a telescope has to be pointed today, which is not quite where the catalogue records the object: the coordinate grid itself has turned since the year 2000 the catalogue is referred to.
- RIGHT ASCENSION
- DECLINATION
- GRID TURNED SINCE
- 19.0
- PROPER MOTION SINCE
- none published
Computed for 2026-09-03 00:00 UT. No proper motion is published for APM 08279+5255, so nothing here moves the object; what separates this from the catalogued position above is the coordinate grid turning under it — about fifty arcseconds a year of precession since 2000, and the small nodding of the Earth’s axis on top of that. Aberration and refraction are not included, and neither is parallax; each is under an arcminute, which is also about as well as the catalogued position is known. The same figure for any date.
CATALOG DATA
] 2 FIELDSThe raw catalogue values, as the source published them, with the error bars where one was published — sorted by what each set of figures is about rather than by the order they happened to be stored in.
WHAT KIND OF THING IT IS
What the object is in itself, rather than how it happens to look from here.
- Accretion state
- quasar — a thin disc near its Eddington limit
WHERE IT IS AND HOW IT MOVES
Position, motion across the sky and the size it covers on it. These are measurements of the object as seen from here, so every one of them depends on where here is.
- Redshift (z)
ALSO KNOWN AS
] 1 DESIGNATIONS- Common name APM 08279+5255
LOOK IT UP ELSEWHERE
] 1 SERVICEEach link carries the identifier printed beside it. Nothing on this page is a measurement of our own, so a number that disagrees with one of these is worth reporting — and a service that has never catalogued this object under this name will say so plainly.
- VizieR5″ around 127.9238 +52.7549
Every published table with a row at this position, searched by coordinates rather than by name.
CITE THIS PAGE
] DR1This page is live and its numbers move when an upstream refreshes, so the citation names the release the rows belong to rather than the day you read them. The release itself is frozen, republished as a bundle, and is what a data-availability statement should point at.
SpaceCatalog. APM 08279+5255 [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/apm-08279-5255
@misc{spacecatalog_apm-08279-5255,
author = {{SpaceCatalog}},
title = {{APM 08279+5255}},
howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
year = {2026},
url = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/apm-08279-5255},
note = {Catalogue entry, data release DR1 (2026-08-21). Values from SpaceCatalog curated data.}
}The values above were taken from SpaceCatalog curated data — CC-BY-4.0. Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue.