- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/243/21
- Title:
- A complete sample of broad-line AGN from SDSS-DR7
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/243/21
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- A new, complete sample of 14584 broad-line active galactic nuclei (AGNs) at z<0.35 is presented, which are uncovered homogeneously from the complete database of galaxies and quasars observed spectroscopically in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Seventh Data Release. The stellar continuum is properly removed for each spectrum with significant host absorption line features, and careful analyses of the emission line spectra, particularly in the H{alpha} and H{beta} wavebands, are carried out. The broad Balmer emission line, particularly H{alpha}, is used to indicate the presence of an AGN. The broad H{alpha} lines have luminosities in a range of 10^38.5^-10^44.3^erg/s, and line widths (FWHMs) of 500-34000km/s. The virial black hole masses, estimated from the broad-line measurements, span a range of 10^5.1^-10^10.3^M_{sun}_, and the Eddington ratios vary from -3.3 to 1.3 in logarithmic scale. Other quantities such as multiwavelength photometric properties and flags denoting peculiar line profiles are also included in this catalog. We describe the construction of this catalog and briefly discuss its properties. The catalog is publicly available online. This homogeneously selected AGN catalog, along with the accurately measured spectral parameters, provides the most updated, largest AGN sample data, which will enable further comprehensive investigations of the properties of the AGN population in the low-redshift universe.
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- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/220/10
- Title:
- AEGIS-X Deep survey of EGS (AEGIS-XD)
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/220/10
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present the results of deep Chandra imaging of the central region of the Extended Groth Strip, the AEGIS-X Deep (AEGIS-XD) survey. When combined with previous Chandra observations of a wider area of the strip, AEGIS-X Wide (AEGIS-XW), these provide data to a nominal exposure depth of 800ks in the three central ACIS-I fields, a region of approximately 0.29deg^2^. This is currently the third deepest X-ray survey in existence; a factor ~2-3 shallower than the Chandra Deep Fields (CDFs), but over an area ~3 times greater than each CDF. We present a catalog of 937 point sources detected in the deep Chandra observations, along with identifications of our X-ray sources from deep ground-based, Spitzer, GALEX, and Hubble Space Telescope imaging. Using a likelihood ratio analysis, we associate multiband counterparts for 929/937 of our X-ray sources, with an estimated 95% reliability, making the identification completeness approximately 94% in a statistical sense. Reliable spectroscopic redshifts for 353 of our X-ray sources are available predominantly from Keck (DEEP2/3) and MMT Hectospec, so the current spectroscopic completeness is ~38%. For the remainder of the X-ray sources, we compute photometric redshifts based on multiband photometry in up to 35 bands from the UV to mid-IR. Particular attention is given to the fact that the vast majority the X-ray sources are active galactic nuclei and require hybrid templates. Our photometric redshifts have mean accuracy of {sigma}=0.04 and an outlier fraction of approximately 5%, reaching {sigma}=0.03 with less than 4% outliers in the area covered by CANDELS.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/200/8
- Title:
- AGES: the AGN and Galaxy Evolution Survey
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/200/8
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The AGN and Galaxy Evolution Survey (AGES) is a redshift survey covering, in its standard fields, 7.7deg^2^ of the Bootes field of the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey. The final sample consists of 23745 redshifts. There are well-defined galaxy samples in 10 bands (the B_W_, R, I, J, K, IRAC 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0um, and MIPS 24um bands) to a limiting magnitude of I<20mag for spectroscopy. For these galaxies, we obtained 18163 redshifts from a sample of 35200 galaxies, where random sparse sampling was used to define statistically complete sub-samples in all 10 photometric bands. The median galaxy redshift is 0.31, and 90% of the redshifts are in the range 0.085<z<0.66. Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) were selected as radio, X-ray, IRAC mid-IR, and MIPS 24um sources to fainter limiting magnitudes (I<22.5mag for point sources). Redshifts were obtained for 4764 quasars and galaxies with AGN signatures, with 2926, 1718, 605, 119, and 13 above redshifts of 0.5, 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. We detail all the AGES selection procedures and present the complete spectroscopic redshift catalogs and spectral energy distribution decompositions. Photometric redshift estimates are provided for all sources in the AGES samples.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/751/52
- Title:
- AGN candidates from the WISE, 2MASS, RASS (W2R)
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/751/52
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We have developed the "S_IX_" statistic to identify bright, highly likely active galactic nucleus (AGN) candidates solely on the basis of Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS), and ROSAT all-sky survey (RASS) data. This statistic was optimized with data from the preliminary WISE survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and tested with Lick 3m Kast spectroscopy. We find that sources with S_IX_<0 have a >~95% likelihood of being an AGN (defined in this paper as a Seyfert 1, quasar, or blazar). This statistic was then applied to the full WISE/2MASS/RASS dataset, including the final WISE data release, to yield the "W2R" sample of 4316 sources with S_IX_<0. Only 2209 of these sources are currently in the Veron-Cetty and Veron (VCV) catalog of spectroscopically confirmed AGNs, indicating that the W2R sample contains nearly 2000 new, relatively bright (J<~16) AGNs. We utilize the W2R sample to quantify biases and incompleteness in the VCV catalog. We find that it is highly complete for bright (J<14), northern AGNs, but the completeness drops below 50% for fainter, southern samples and for sources near the Galactic plane. This approach also led to the spectroscopic identification of 10 new AGNs in the Kepler field, more than doubling the number of AGNs being monitored by Kepler. The W2R sample contains better than 1 bright AGN every 10 deg^2^, permitting construction of AGN samples in any sufficiently large region of sky.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/146/87
- Title:
- AGN photometry. II. A catalog from the CFHTLS
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/146/87
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- This is the second paper of the series Detecting Active Galactic Nuclei Using Multi-filter Imaging Data. In this paper we review shapelets, an image manipulation algorithm, which we employ to adjust the point-spread function (PSF) of galaxy images. This technique is used to ensure the image in each filter has the same and sharpest PSF, which is the preferred condition for detecting AGNs using multi-filter imaging data as we demonstrated in Paper I of this series. We apply shapelets on Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey Wide Survey ugriz images. Photometric parameters such as effective radii, integrated fluxes within certain radii, and color gradients are measured on the shapelets-reconstructed images. These parameters are used by artificial neural networks (ANNs) which yield: photometric redshift with an rms of 0.026 and a regression R-value of 0.92; galaxy morphological types with an uncertainty less than 2 T types for z<=0.1; and identification of galaxies as AGNs with 70% confidence, star-forming/starburst (SF/SB) galaxies with 90% confidence, and passive galaxies with 70% confidence for z<=0.1. The incorporation of ANNs provides a more reliable technique for identifying AGN or SF/SB candidates, which could be very useful for large-scale multi-filter optical surveys that also include a modest set of spectroscopic data sufficient to train neural networks.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/221/12
- Title:
- AGNs in the MIR using AllWISE data
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/221/12
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present an all-sky sample of ~1.4 million active galactic nuclei (AGNs) meeting a two-color infrared photometric selection criteria for AGNs as applied to sources from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer final catalog release (AllWISE). We assess the spatial distribution and optical properties of our sample and find that the results are consistent with expectations for AGNs. These sources have a mean density of ~38 AGNs per square degree on the sky, and their apparent magnitude distribution peaks at g~20, extending to objects as faint as g~26. We test the AGN selection criteria against a large sample of optically identified stars and determine the "leakage" (that is, the probability that a star detected in an optical survey will be misidentified as a quasi-stellar object (QSO) in our sample) rate to be <=4.0x10^-5^. We conclude that our sample contains almost no optically identified stars (<=0.041%), making this sample highly promising for future celestial reference frame work as it significantly increases the number of all-sky, compact extragalactic objects. We further compare our sample to catalogs of known AGNs/QSOs and find a completeness value of >~84% (that is, the probability of correctly identifying a known AGN/QSO is at least 84%) for AGNs brighter than a limiting magnitude of R<~19. Our sample includes approximately 1.1 million previously uncataloged AGNs.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/772/26
- Title:
- AGN with WISE. II. The NDWFS Bootes field
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/772/26
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- Stern et al. (2012ApJ...753...30S, Paper I) presented a study of Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) selection of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in the 2deg^2^ COSMOS field, finding that a simple criterion W1-W2>=0.8 provides a highly reliable and complete AGN sample for W2<15.05, where the W1 and W2 passbands are centered at 3.4{mu}m and 4.6{mu}m, respectively. Here we extend this study using the larger 9deg^2^ NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey Bootes field which also has considerably deeper WISE observations than the COSMOS field, and find that this simple color cut significantly loses reliability at fainter fluxes. We define a modified selection criterion combining the W1-W2 color and the W2 magnitude to provide highly reliable or highly complete AGN samples for fainter WISE sources. In particular, we define a color-magnitude cut that finds 130+/-4deg^-2^ AGN candidates for W2<17.11 with 90% reliability. Using the extensive UV through mid-IR broadband photometry available in this field, we study the spectral energy distributions of WISE AGN candidates. We find that, as expected, the WISE AGN selection can identify highly obscured AGNs, but that it is biased toward objects where the AGN dominates the bolometric luminosity output. We study the distribution of reddening in the AGN sample and discuss a formalism to account for sample incompleteness based on the step-wise maximum-likelihood method of Efstathiou et al. The resulting dust obscuration distributions depend strongly on AGN luminosity, consistent with the trend expected for a receding torus. At L_AGN_~3x10^44^erg/s, 29%+/-7% of AGNs are observed as Type 1, while at ~4x10^45^erg/s the fraction is 64%+/-13%. The distribution of obscuration values suggests that dust in the torus is present as both a diffuse medium and in optically thick clouds.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/183/295
- Title:
- A K-selected catalog of the ECDFS from MUSYC
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/183/295
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present a new, K-selected, optical-to-near infrared photometric catalog of the Extended Chandra Deep Field South (ECDFS), making it publicly available to the astronomical community. The data set is founded on publicly available imaging, supplemented by original z'JK imaging data collected as part of the MUltiwavelength Survey by Yale-Chile (MUSYC). The final photometric catalog consists of photometry derived from UU_38_BVRIz'JK imaging covering the full 1/2x1/2{deg} of the ECDFS, plus H-band photometry for approximately 80% of the field. The 5{sigma} flux limit for point sources is K^(AB)^_tot_=22.0. This is also the nominal completeness and reliability limit of the catalog: the empirical completeness for 21.75<K<22.00 is >~85%. We have verified the quality of the catalog through both internal consistency checks, and comparisons to other existing and publicly available catalogs. As well as the photometric catalog, we also present catalogs of photometric redshifts and rest-frame photometry derived from the 10-band photometry. We have collected robust spectroscopic redshift determinations from published sources for 1966 galaxies in the catalog. Based on these sources, we have achieved a (1{sigma}) photometric redshift accuracy of {Delta}z/(1+z)=0.036, with an outlier fraction of 7.8%. Most of these outliers are X-ray sources. Finally, we describe and release a utility for interpolating rest-frame photometry from observed spectral energy distributions, dubbed InterRest available via http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~ent/InterRest
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/788/125
- Title:
- An ALMA survey of ECDFS submillimeter galaxies
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/788/125
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present the first photometric redshift distribution for a large sample of 870 {mu}m submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) with robust identifications based on observations with ALMA. In our analysis we consider 96 SMGs in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South, 77 of which have 4-19 band photometry. We model the SEDs for these 77 SMGs, deriving a median photometric redshift of z_phot_=2.3+/-0.1. The remaining 19 SMGs have insufficient photometry to derive photometric redshifts, but a stacking analysis of Herschel observations confirms they are not spurious. Assuming that these SMGs have an absolute H-band magnitude distribution comparable to that of a complete sample of z~1-2 SMGs, we demonstrate that they lie at slightly higher redshifts, raising the median redshift for SMGs to z_phot_=2.5+/-0.2. Critically we show that the proportion of galaxies undergoing an SMG-like phase at z>=3 is at most 35%+/-5% of the total population. We derive a median stellar mass of M_*_=(8+/-1)x10^10^ M_{sun}_, although there are systematic uncertainties of up to 5x for individual sources. Assuming that the star formation activity in SMGs has a timescale of ~100 Myr, we show that their descendants at z~0 would have a space density and M_H_ distribution that are in good agreement with those of local ellipticals. In addition, the inferred mass-weighted ages of the local ellipticals broadly agree with the look-back times of the SMG events. Taken together, these results are consistent with a simple model that identifies SMGs as events that form most of the stars seen in the majority of luminous elliptical galaxies at the present day.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/154/269
- Title:
- A new photo-z method for quasars in Stripe 82
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/154/269
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present a new algorithm to estimate quasar photometric redshifts (photo-zs), by considering the asymmetries in the relative flux distributions of quasars. The relative flux models are built with multivariate Skew-t distributions in the multidimensional space of relative fluxes as a function of redshift and magnitude. For 151392 quasars in the SDSS, we achieve a photo-z accuracy, defined as the fraction of quasars with the difference between the photo-z z_p_ and the spectroscopic redshift z_s_, |{Delta}_z_|=|z_s_-z_p_|/(1+z_s_) within 0.1, of 74%. Combining the WISE W1 and W2 infrared data with the SDSS data, the photo-z accuracy is enhanced to 87%. Using the Pan-STARRS1 or DECaLS photometry with WISE W1 and W2 data, the photo-z accuracies are 79% and 72%, respectively. The prior probabilities as a function of magnitude for quasars, stars, and galaxies are calculated, respectively, based on (1) the quasar luminosity function, (2) the Milky Way synthetic simulation with the Besancon model, and (3) the Bayesian Galaxy Photometric Redshift estimation. The relative fluxes of stars are obtained with the Padova isochrones, and the relative fluxes of galaxies are modeled through galaxy templates. We test our classification method to select quasars using the DECaLS g, r, z, and WISE W1 and W2 photometry. The quasar selection completeness is higher than 70% for a wide redshift range 0.5<z<4.5, and a wide magnitude range 18<r<21.5 mag. Our photo-z regression and classification method has the potential to extend to future surveys. The photo-z code will be publicly available.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/135/1276
- Title:
- ATLAS radio observations of ELAIS-S1
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/135/1276
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We have conducted sensitive (1{sigma}<30uJy) 1.4GHz radio observations with the Australia Telescope Compact Array of a field largely coincident with infrared observations of the Spitzer Wide-Area Extragalactic Survey (SWIRE, 2003PASP..115..897L). The field is centered on the European Large Area ISO Survey S1 region and has a total area of 3.9{deg}. We describe the observations and calibration, source extraction, and cross-matching to infrared sources. Two catalogs are presented: one of the radio components found in the image and another of radio sources with counterparts in the infrared and extracted from the literature. 1366 radio components were grouped into 1276 sources, 1183 of which were matched to infrared sources. We discover 31 radio sources with no infrared counterpart at all, adding to the class of Infrared-Faint Radio Sources.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/153/107
- Title:
- Australian Dark Energy Survey (OzDES) quasar catalog
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/153/107
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present a study of quasar selection using the supernova fields of the Dark Energy Survey (DES). We used a quasar catalog from an overlapping portion of the SDSS Stripe 82 region to quantify the completeness and efficiency of selection methods involving color, probabilistic modeling, variability, and combinations of color/probabilistic modeling with variability. In all cases, we considered only objects that appear as point sources in the DES images. We examine color selection methods based on the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) (Wright et al. 2010AJ....140.1868W) mid-IR W1-W2 color, a mixture of WISE and DES colors (g-i and i-W1), and a mixture of Vista Hemisphere Survey (McMahon et al. 2013Msngr.154...35M) and DES colors (g-i and i-K). For probabilistic quasar selection, we used XDQSO, an algorithm that employs an empirical multi-wavelength flux model of quasars to assign quasar probabilities. Our variability selection uses the multi-band {chi}^2^-probability that sources are constant in the DES Year 1 griz-band light curves. The completeness and efficiency are calculated relative to an underlying sample of point sources that are detected in the required selection bands and pass our data quality and photometric error cuts. We conduct our analyses at two magnitude limits, i<19.8 mag and i<22 mag. For the subset of sources with W1 and W2 detections, the W1-W2 color or XDQSOz method combined with variability gives the highest completenesses of >85% for both i-band magnitude limits and efficiencies of >80% to the bright limit and >60% to the faint limit; however, the giW1 and giW1+variability methods give the highest quasar surface densities. The XDQSOz method and combinations of W1W2/giW1/XDQSOz with variability are among the better selection methods when both high completeness and high efficiency are desired. We also present the OzDES Quasar Catalog of 1263 spectroscopically confirmed quasars from three years of OzDES observation in the 30 deg^2^ of the DES supernova fields. The catalog includes quasars with redshifts up to z~4 and brighter than i=22 mag, although the catalog is not complete up to this magnitude limit.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/870/31
- Title:
- BAT AGN spectroscopic survey. XI. IR photometry
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/870/31
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We quantify the luminosity contribution of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) to the 12{mu}m, mid-infrared (MIR; 5-38{mu}m), and total IR (5-1000{mu}m) emission in the local AGNs detected in the all-sky 70 month Swift/Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) ultrahard X-ray survey. We decompose the IR spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of 587 objects into the AGN and starburst components using templates for an AGN torus and a star-forming galaxy. This enables us to recover the emission from the AGN torus including the low-luminosity end, down to log(L_14-150_/erg/s)~41, which typically has significant host galaxy contamination. The sample demonstrates that the luminosity contribution of the AGN to the 12{mu}m, the MIR, and the total IR bands is an increasing function of the 14-150keV luminosity. We also find that for the most extreme cases, the IR pure-AGN emission from the torus can extend up to 90{mu}m. The total IR AGN luminosity obtained through the IR SED decomposition enables us to estimate the fraction of the sky obscured by dust, i.e., the dust covering factor. We demonstrate that the median dust covering factor is always smaller than the median X-ray obscuration fraction above an AGN bolometric luminosity of log(L_bol_^(AGN)^/erg/s)~42.5. Considering that the X-ray obscuration fraction is equivalent to the covering factor coming from both the dust and gas, this indicates that an additional neutral gas component, along with the dusty torus, is responsible for the absorption of X-ray emission.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/216/20
- Title:
- Blanco Cosmology Survey (BCS) new reduction
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/216/20
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The Blanco Cosmology Survey is a four-band (griz) optical-imaging survey of ~80deg^2^ of the southern sky. The survey consists of two fields centered approximately at (RA,DE)=(23h,-55{deg}) and (5h30m,-53{deg}) with imaging sufficient for the detection of L_*_ galaxies at redshift z<=1. In this paper, we present our reduction of the survey data and describe a new technique for the separation of stars and galaxies. We search the calibrated source catalogs for galaxy clusters at z<=0.75 by identifying spatial over-densities of red-sequence galaxies and report the coordinates, redshifts, and optical richnesses, {lambda}, for 764 galaxy clusters at z<=0.75. This sample, >85% of which are new discoveries, has a median redshift of z=0.52 and median richness {lambda}(0.4L_*_)=16.4.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/742/48
- Title:
- Blanco survey of the lens BCS J2352-5452
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/742/48
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We report on the serendipitous discovery in the Blanco Cosmology Survey (BCS) imaging data of a z=0.9057 galaxy that is being strongly lensed by a massive galaxy cluster at a redshift of z=0.3838. The lens (BCS J2352-5452) was discovered while examining i- and z-band images being acquired in 2006 October during a BCS observing run. Follow-up spectroscopic observations with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph instrument on the Gemini-South 8m telescope confirmed the lensing nature of this system. Using weak-plus-strong lensing, velocity dispersion, cluster richness N_200_, and fitting to a Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) cluster mass density profile, we have made three independent estimates of the mass M_200_ which are all very consistent with each other. The combination of the results from the three methods gives M_200_=(5.1+/-1.3)x10^14^M_{sun}_, which is fully consistent with the individual measurements. The final NFW concentration c_200_ from the combined fit is c_200_=5.4^+1.4^_-1.1_. We have compared our measurements of M_200_ and c_200_ with predictions for (1) clusters from {Lambda}CDM simulations, (2) lensing-selected clusters from simulations, and (3) a real sample of cluster lenses.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/867/131
- Title:
- Blazar candidates behind the Magellanic Clouds
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/867/131
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We report the identification of blazar candidates behind the Magellanic Clouds. The objects were selected from the Magellanic Quasars Survey (MQS), which targeted the entire Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and 70% of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). Among the 758 MQS quasars and 898 of the unidentified (featureless spectra) objects, we identified a sample of 44 blazar candidates, including 27 flat-spectrum radio quasars and 17 BL Lacertae objects, respectively. All the blazar candidates from our sample were identified with respect to their radio, optical, and midinfrared properties. The newly selected blazar candidates possess the long-term, multicolor photometric data from the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, multicolor midinfrared observations, and archival radio data for one frequency at least. In addition, for nine of them, the radio polarization data are available. With such data, these objects can be used to study the physics behind the blazar variability detected in the optical and midinfrared bands, as a tool to investigate magnetic field geometry of the LMC and SMC, and as an exemplary sample of point-like sources most likely detectable in the {gamma}-ray range with the newly emerging Cherenkov Telescope Array.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/206/12
- Title:
- Blazars with {gamma}-ray counterparts. I.
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/206/12
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present a new method for identifying blazar candidates by examining the locus, i.e., the region occupied by the Fermi {gamma}-ray blazars in the three-dimensional color space defined by the WISE infrared colors. This method is a refinement of our previous approach that made use of the two-dimensional projection of the distribution of WISE {gamma}-ray-emitting blazars (the Strip) in the three WISE color-color planes. In this paper, we define the three-dimensional locus by means of a principal component analysis of the color distribution of a large sample of blazars composed of all the ROMA-BZCAT sources with counterparts in the WISE All-Sky Catalog associated with {gamma}-ray sources in the second Fermi-LAT catalog (2FGL; the WISE Fermi blazars sample, WFB). Our new procedure yields a total completeness of c_tot_~81% and a total efficiency of e_tot_~97%. We also obtain local estimates of the efficiency and completeness as functions of the WISE colors and galactic coordinates of the candidate blazars. The catalog of all WISE candidate blazars associated with the WFB sample is also presented, complemented by archival multi-frequency information for the alternative associations. Finally, we apply the new association procedure to all {gamma}-ray blazars in the 2FGL and provide a catalog containing all the {gamma}-ray candidate blazars selected according to our procedure.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/206/13
- Title:
- Blazars with {gamma}-ray counterparts. II.
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/206/13
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- A significant fraction (~30%) of the high-energy gamma-ray sources listed in the second Fermi Large Area Telescope catalog (2FGL) are still of unknown origin, being not yet associated with counterparts at low energies. We recently developed a new association method to identify if there is a {gamma}-ray blazar candidate within the positional uncertainty region of a generic 2FGL source. This method is entirely based on the discovery that blazars have distinct infrared colors with respect to other extragalactic sources found, thanks to the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) all-sky observations. Several improvements have also been performed to increase the efficiency of our method in recognizing {gamma}-ray blazar candidates. In this paper we applied our method to two different samples, the first constituted by unidentified {gamma}-ray sources (UGSs), and the second by active galaxies of uncertain type, both listed in the 2FGL. We present a catalog of IR counterparts for ~20% of the UGSs investigated. Then, we also compare our results for the associated sources with those present in the literature. In addition, we illustrate the extensive archival research carried out to identify the radio, infrared, optical, and X-ray counterparts of the WISE-selected, {gamma}-ray blazar candidates. Finally, we discuss the future developments of our method based on ground-based follow-up observations.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/207/16
- Title:
- BL Lac candidates for TeV observations
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/207/16
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- BL Lac objects are the most numerous class of extragalactic TeV-detected sources. One of the biggest difficulties in investigating their TeV emission is due to their limited number, since only 47 BL Lac objects are known to be TeV emitters. In this paper, we propose new criteria to select TeV BL Lac candidates based on infrared and X-ray observations. We apply our selection criteria to the BL Lac objects listed in the ROMA-BZCAT catalog (Cat. J/A+A/495/691), thereby identifying 41 potential TeV emitters. We then perform a search over a more extended sample combining the ROSAT bright source catalog (Cat. IX/10) and the WISE all-sky survey (Cat. II/311), revealing 54 additional candidates for TeV observations. Our investigation also led to a tentative classification of 16 unidentified X-ray sources as BL Lac candidates. This analysis provides new interesting BL Lac targets for future observations with ground-based Cherenkov telescopes.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/538/A26
- Title:
- BL Lac objects beyond z=1.3
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/538/A26
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- Observations of the {gamma}-ray sky with Fermi led to significant advances towards understanding blazars, the most extreme class of active galactic nuclei. A large fraction of the population detected by Fermi is formed by BL Lacertae (BL Lac) objects, whose sample has always suffered from a severe redshift incompleteness due to the quasi-featureless optical spectra. Our goal is to provide a significant increase of the number of confirmed high-redshift BL Lac objects contained in the 2 LAC Fermi/LAT catalog.