- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AN/340/437
- Title:
- Optical variability of blazars
- Short Name:
- J/AN/340/437
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The analysis of blazars' parameters from BZCAT leads to a conclusion that they do not have the same properties. The preliminary criterion to include an object in the catalog was the strong radio emission; however, two type of radio sources were selected: BL Lacertae (BLL) objects and Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQ). As a number of properties are typical of blazars (strong radio emission, optical variability, continuum optical spectra, polarization, high luminosity, etc.), using the optical data, we investigate them to clarify which property plays the most significant role in their classification as blazars. We found that 60% of blazars have optical variability. We use a technique developed based on POSS1 and POSS2 photometry and group the variability into extreme, strong, medium, and low classes. In the optical range, 51 blazars have powerful variability (extreme variables), and 126 are high variables. In addition, 63% of blazars have detected radiation in X-ray and 28% have detected radiation in gamma rays. We give the average statistical characteristics of blazars based on our analysis and calculations.
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Search Results
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/321/123
- Title:
- Optical variability of QSOs
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/321/123
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The SA94 variability sample is made up of 149 optically selected quasars listed in this table, observed in a rectangular area of the sky within the limits 2h 43m 51.2s < RA < 2h 59m 14.3s, -2deg 03' 23.8" < DEC < 2deg 32' 11.0" (Epoch 1950.0), covering 17.66 sq.deg.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/900/58
- Title:
- Opt-IR LC compilation of DES Stripe 82 quasars
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/900/58
- Date:
- 11 Mar 2022 15:16:31
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The size of the dust torus in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and their high-luminosity counterparts, quasars, can be inferred from the time delay between UV/optical accretion disk continuum variability and the response in the mid-infrared (MIR) torus emission. This dust reverberation mapping (RM) technique has been successfully applied to ~70 z<~0.3 AGNs and quasars. Here we present first results of our dust RM program for distant quasars covered in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 region combining ~20yr ground-based optical light curves with 10yr MIR light curves from the WISE satellite. We measure a high-fidelity lag between W1 band (3.4{mu}m) and g band for 587 quasars over 0.3<~z<~2 (<z>~0.8) and two orders of magnitude in quasar luminosity. They tightly follow (intrinsic scatter ~0.17dex in lag) the IR lag-luminosity relation observed for z<0.3 AGNs, revealing a remarkable size-luminosity relation for the dust torus over more than four decades in AGN luminosity, with little dependence on additional quasar properties such as Eddington ratio and variability amplitude. This study motivates further investigations in the utility of dust RM for cosmology and strongly endorses a compelling science case for the combined 10yr Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (optical) and 5yr Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope 2{mu}m light curves in a deep survey for low-redshift AGN dust RM with much lower luminosities and shorter, measurable IR lags. The compiled optical and MIR light curves for 7384 quasars in our parent sample are made public with this work.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/454/3864
- Title:
- Orientation & QSO black hole mass estimation
- Short Name:
- J/MNRAS/454/3864
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We have constructed a sample of 386 radio-loud quasars with z<0.75 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in order to investigate orientation effects on black hole mass estimates. Orientation is estimated using radio core dominance measurements based on FIRST survey maps. Black hole masses are estimated from virial-based scaling relationships using H{beta}, and compared to the stellar velocity dispersion ({sigma}*), predicted using the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of [OIII] {lambda}5007, which tracks mass via the M-{sigma}* relation. We find that the FWHM of H{beta} correlates significantly with radio core dominance and biases black hole mass determinations that use it, but that this is not the case for {sigma}* based on [OIII] {lambda}5007. The ratio of black hole masses predicted using orientation-biased and unbiased estimates, which can be determined for radio-quiet as well as radio-loud quasars, is significantly correlated with radio core dominance. Although there is significant scatter, this mass ratio calculated in this way may in fact serve as an orientation estimator. We additionally note the existence of a small population of radio core-dominated quasars with extremely broad H{beta} emission lines that we hypothesize may represent recent black hole mergers.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/658/99
- Title:
- Pairs of QSO in SDSS-DR4
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/658/99
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We study quasar clustering on small scales, modeling clustering amplitudes using halo-driven dark matter descriptions. From 91 pairs n scales <35h^-1^kpc, we detect only a slight excess in quasar clustering over our best-fit large-scale model. Integrated across all redshifts, the implied quasar bias is bQ=4.21+/-0.98 (bQ=3.93+/-0.71) at ~18h^-1^kpc (~28h^-1^kpc).
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/463/296
- Title:
- PanSTARRS-1 slow-blue nuclear hypervariables
- Short Name:
- J/MNRAS/463/296
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We discuss 76 large amplitude transients ({Delta}m>1.5) occurring in the nuclei of galaxies, nearly all with no previously known active galactic nucleus (AGN). They have been discovered as part of the Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) 3{pi} survey, by comparison with Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) photometry a decade earlier, and then monitored with the Liverpool Telescope, and studied spectroscopically with the William Herschel Telescope (WHT). Based on colours, light-curve shape, and spectra, these transients fall into four groups. A few are misclassified stars or objects of unknown type. Some are red/fast transients and are known or likely nuclear supernovae. A few are either radio sources or erratic variables and so likely blazars. However the majority (~66 per cent) are blue and evolve slowly, on a time-scale of years. Spectroscopy shows them to be AGN at z ~0.3-1.4, which must have brightened since the SDSS photometry by around an order of magnitude. It is likely that these objects were in fact AGN a decade ago, but too weak to be recognized by SDSS; they could then be classed as 'hypervariable' AGN. By searching the SDSS Stripe 82 quasar database, we find 15 similar objects. We discuss several possible explanations for these slow-blue hypervariables - (i) unusually luminous tidal disruption events; (ii) extinction events; (iii) changes in accretion state; and (iv) large amplitude microlensing by stars in foreground galaxies. A mixture of explanations (iii) and (iv) seems most likely. Both hold promise of considerable new insight into the AGN phenomenon.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/399/469
- Title:
- Parkes Quarter-Jansky Flat-Spectrum Sample. II.
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/399/469
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present optical spectra and redshift measurements for 178 flat-spectrum objects from the Parkes quarter-Jansky flat-spectrum sample. These spectra were obtained in order to compile a complete sample of quasars for use in a study of quasar evolution. We present a composite optical spectrum made from the subset of 109 quasars that have flux densities in the range 0.25Jy<S(2.7GHz)<0.5Jy, and make a comparison with a composite spectrum for radio-quiet QSOs from the Large Bright Quasar Survey. Our large sample of radio-loud quasars allows us to strengthen previous reports that the Ly and CIV emission lines have larger equivalent width in radio-loud quasars than radio-quiet QSOs to greater than the 3{sigma} level. However we see no significant difference in the equivalent widths of CIII] or MgII. We also show that the flux decrements across the Lyman-{alpha} line (DA) measured from these spectra show the same trend with redshift as for optically selected QSOs.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/419/80
- Title:
- Photometric Classification Catalogue of SDSS DR7
- Short Name:
- J/MNRAS/419/80
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present a catalogue of about six million unresolved photometric detections in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Seventh Data Release, classifying them into stars, galaxies and quasars. We use a machine learning classifier trained on a subset of spectroscopically confirmed objects from 14th to 22nd magnitude in the SDSS i band. Our catalogue consists of 2430625 quasars, 3544036 stars and 63586 unresolved galaxies from 14th to 24th magnitude in the SDSS i-band. Our algorithm recovers 99.96 per cent of spectroscopically confirmed quasars and 99.51 per cent of stars to i~21.3 in the colour window that we study. The level of contamination due to data artefacts for objects beyond i=21.3 is highly uncertain and all mention of completeness and contamination in the paper are valid only for objects brighter than this magnitude. However, a comparison of the predicted number of quasars with the theoretical number counts shows reasonable agreement.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/584/A44
- Title:
- Photometric classification of QSO from RCS-2
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/584/A44
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present new quasar candidate catalogs from the Red-Sequence Cluster Survey 2 (RCS-2), identified solely from photometric information using a Random Forest algorithm. The algorithm is trained using a well-defined SDSS spectroscopic sample of quasars and stars. The algorithm identifies putative quasars from broadband magnitudes (g, r, i, z) and colors. Exploiting NUV GALEX measurements for a subset of the objects, we refine the classifier by adding new information. An additional subset of the data with WISE W1 and W2 bands is also studied. Upon analyzing 542,897 RCS-2 point sources, the algorithm identified 21,501 quasar candidates, with a training-set-derived precision of 89.5% and recall of 88.4%. These performance metrics improve for the GALEX subset; 6530 quasar candidates are identified from 16898 sources, with a precision and recall respectively of 97.0% and 97.5%. Algorithm performance is further improved when WISE data are included, with precision and recall increasing to 99.3% and 99.1% respectively for 21834 quasar candidates from 242902 sources. After merging these samples and removing duplicates, we obtain 38257 candidates.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/611/A97
- Title:
- Photometric quasar candidates in Stripe 82
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/611/A97
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We have applied a convolutional neural network (CNN) to classify and detect quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 and also to predict the photometric redshifts of quasars. The network takes the variability of objects into account by converting light curves into images. The width of the images, noted w, corresponds to the five magnitudes ugriz and the height of the images, noted h, represents the date of the observation. The CNN provides good results since its precision is 0.988 for a recall of 0.90, compared to a precision of 0.985 for the same recall with a random forest classifier. Moreover 175 new quasar candidates are found with the CNN considering a fixed recall of 0.97. The combination of probabilities given by the CNN and the random forest makes good performance even better with a precision of 0.99 for a recall of 0.90. For the redshift predictions, the CNN presents excellent results which are higher than those obtained with a feature extraction step and different classifiers (a K-nearest-neighbors, a support vector machine, a random forest and a Gaussian process classifier). Indeed, the accuracy of the CNN within |{DELTA}z|<0.1 can reach 78.09%, within |{DELTA}z|<0.2 reaches 86.15%, within |{DELTA}z|<0.3 reaches 91.2% and the value of root mean square (rms) is 0.359. The performance of the KNN decreases for the three |{DELTA}z| regions, since within the accuracy of |{DELTA}z|<0.1, |{DELTA}z|<0.2, and |{DELTA}z|<0.3 is 73.72%, 82.46%, and 90.09% respectively, and the value of rms amounts to 0.395. So the CNN successfully reduces the dispersion and the catastrophic redshifts of quasars. This new method is very promising for the future of big databases such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.
