We present a catalogue of candidates in extragalactic objects -- the Northern Extragalactic WISExPan-STARRS (NEWS), which covers almost 3/4 of the sky in a broad optical-infrared spectral range, with a depth of up to 23mag in optical filter g. To create the NEWS catalogue, we used the mid-IR data of the WISE survey (W1,W2) paired up with photometric information of the Pan-STARRS DR1 survey in the optical and near-IR (g,r,i,z,y) spectral ranges. Our catalogue is the result of a classification of the WISExPan-STARRS objects with the SVM machine-learning algorithm. The classification was based solely on photometric information and the automatic creation of features that was carried out using an autoencoder neural network. NEWS catalogue contains 40,350,492 extragalactic objects (galaxies and quasars), identified with a high classification quality (>98%).
We aim to obtain a complete sample of redshift z>=3.6 radio quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) from the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty cm survey (FIRST) sources (S_1.4GHz_>1mJy) having star-like counterparts in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 5 (DR5) photometric survey (r_AB_<=20.2). Our starting sample of 8665 FIRST-DR5 pairs includes 4250 objects with spectra in DR5, 52 of these being z>=3.6 QSOs. We found that simple supervised neural networks, trained on the sources with DR5 spectra, and using optical photometry and radio data, are very effective for identifying high-z QSOs in a sample without spectra. For the sources with DR5 spectra the technique yields a completeness (fraction of actual high-z QSOs classified as such by the neural network) of 96 per cent, and an efficiency (fraction of objects selected by the neural network as high-z QSOs that actually are high-z QSOs) of 62 per cent. Applying the trained networks to the 4415 sources without DR5 spectra we found 58 z>=3.6 QSO candidates. We obtained spectra of 27 of them, and 17 are confirmed as high-z QSOs. Spectra of 13 additional candidates from the literature and from SDSS Data Release 6 (DR6) revealed seven more z>=3.6 QSOs, giving an overall efficiency of 60 per cent (24/40).
The identification of quasars at intermediate redshifts (2.2<z<3.5) has been inefficient in most previous quasar surveys since the optical colors of quasars are similar to those of stars. The near-IR K-band excess technique has been suggested to overcome this difficulty. Our recent study also proposed to use optical/near-IR colors for selecting z<4 quasars. To verify the effectiveness of this method, we selected a list of 105 unidentified bright targets with i<=18.5 from the quasar candidates of SDSS DR6 with both SDSS ugriz optical and UKIDSS YJHK near-IR photometric data, which satisfy our proposed Y-K/g-z criterion and have photometric redshifts between 2.2 and 3.5 estimated from the nine-band SDSS-UKIDSS data. We observed 43 targets with the BFOSC instrument on the 2.16m optical telescope at Xinglong station of the National Astronomical Observatory of China in the spring of 2012. We spectroscopically identified 36 targets as quasars with redshifts between 2.1 and 3.4. The high success rate of discovering these quasars in the SDSS spectroscopic surveyed area further demonstrates the robustness of both the Y-K/g-z selection criterion and the photometric redshift estimation technique. We also used the above criterion to investigate the possible stellar contamination rate among the quasar candidates of SDSS DR6, and found that the rate is much higher when selecting 3<z<3.5 quasar candidates than when selecting lower redshift candidates (z<2.2). The significant improvement in the photometric redshift estimation when using the nine-band SDSS-UKIDSS data over the five-band SDSS data is demonstrated and a catalog of 7727 unidentified quasar candidates in SDSS DR6 selected with optical/near-IR colors and having photometric redshifts between 2.2 and 3.5 is provided. We also tested the Y-K/g-z selection criterion with the recently released SDSS-III/DR9 quasar catalog and found that 96.2% of 17999 DR9 quasars with UKIDSS Y- and K-band data satisfy our criterion. With some available samples of red quasars and type II quasars, we find that 88% and 96.5% of these objects can be selected by the Y-K/g-z criterion, respectively, which supports our claim that using the Y-K/g-z criterion efficiently selects both unobscured and obscured quasars. We discuss the implications of our results on the ongoing and upcoming large optical and near-IR sky surveys.
The identification of quasars in the redshift range 2.2<z<3 is known to be very inefficient because the optical colors of such quasars are indistinguishable from those of stars. Recent studies have proposed using optical variability or near-infrared (near-IR) colors to improve the identification of the missing quasars in this redshift range. Here we present a case study combining both methods. We select a sample of 70 quasar candidates from variables in Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82, which are non-ultraviolet excess sources and have UKIDSS near-IR public data. They are clearly separated into two parts on the Y-K/g-z color-color diagram, and 59 of them meet or lie close to a newly proposed Y-K/g-z selection criterion for z<4 quasars. Of these 59 sources, 44 were previously identified as quasars in SDSS DR7, and 35 of them are quasars at 2.2<z<3. We present spectroscopic observations of 14 of 15 remaining quasar candidates using the Bok 2.3m telescope and the MMT 6.5m telescope, and successfully identify all of them as new quasars at z=2.36-2.88. We also apply this method to a sample of 643 variable quasar candidates with SDSS-UKIDSS nine-band photometric data selected from 1875 new quasar candidates in SDSS Stripe 82 given by Butler & Bloom (2011AJ....141...93B) based on the time-series selections, and find that 188 of them are probably new quasars with photometric redshifts at 2.2<z<3. Our results indicate that the combination of optical variability and optical/near-IR colors is probably the most efficient way to find 2.2<z<3 quasars and is very helpful for constructing a complete quasar sample. We discuss its implications for ongoing and upcoming large optical and near-IR sky surveys.
We present a catalog of over 130000 quasar candidates with near-infrared (NIR) photometric properties, with an areal coverage of approximately 1200deg^2^. This is achieved by matching the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in the optical ugriz bands to the UKIRT Infrared Digital Sky Survey (UKIDSS) Large Area Survey (LAS) in the NIR YJHK bands. We match the ~1 million SDSS DR6 Photometric Quasar catalog to Data Release 3 of the UKIDSS LAS (ULAS) and produce a catalog with 130827 objects with detections in one or more NIR bands, of which 74351 objects have optical and K-band detections and 42133 objects have the full nine-band photometry.
Red quasars are thought to be an intermediate population between merger-driven star-forming galaxies in dust-enshrouded phase and normal quasars. If so, they are expected to have high accretion ratios, but their intrinsic dust extinction hampers reliable determination of Eddington ratios. Here, we compare the accretion rates of 16 red quasars at z~0.7 to those of normal type 1 quasars at the same redshift range. The red quasars are selected by their red colors in optical through near-infrared (NIR) and radio detection. The accretion rates of the red quasars are derived from the P{beta} line in NIR spectra, which is obtained by the SpeX on the Infrared Telescope Facility in order to avoid the effects of dust extinction. We find that the measured Eddington ratios (L_bol_/L_Edd_~=0.69) of red quasars are significantly higher than those of normal type 1 quasars, which is consistent with a scenario in which red quasars are the intermediate population and the black holes of red quasars grow very rapidly during such a stage.
We study the rest-frame optical properties of 74 luminous (L_bol_=10^46.2-48.2^erg/s), 1.5<z<3.5 broad-line quasars with near-IR (JHK) slit spectroscopy. Systemic redshifts based on the peak of the [OIII]{lambda}5007 line reveal that redshift estimates from the rest-frame UV broad emission lines (mostly MgII) are intrinsically uncertain by ~200km/s (measurement errors accounted for). The overall full-width-at-half-maximum of the narrow [OIII] line is ~1000km/s on average. A significant fraction of the total [OIII] flux (~40%) is in a blueshifted wing component with a median velocity offset of ~700km/s, indicative of ionized outflows within a few kpc from the nucleus; we do not find evidence of significant [OIII] flux beyond ~10kpc in our slit spectroscopy. The [OIII] line is noticeably more asymmetric and weaker than that in typical less luminous low-z quasars. However, when matched in quasar continuum luminosity, low-z quasars have similar [OIII] profiles and strengths as these high-z systems. Therefore the exceptionally large width and blueshifted wing, and the relatively weak strength of [OIII] in high-z luminous quasars are mostly a luminosity effect rather than redshift evolution. The H{beta}-[OIII] region of these high-z quasars displays a similar spectral diversity and Eigenvector 1 correlations with anti-correlated [OIII] and optical FeII strengths, as seen in low-z quasars; but the average broad H{beta} width is larger by 25% than typical low-z quasars, indicating more massive black holes in these high-z systems. These results highlight the importance of understanding [OIII] in the general context of quasar parameter space in order to understand quasar feedback in the form of [OIII] outflows. The calibrated one-dimensional near-IR spectra are made publicly available, along with a composite spectrum.
By statistically analysing a large sample that includes Fermi-detected blazars (FBs) and non-Fermi-detected blazars (NFBs), we find that there are significant differences between FBs and NFBs in redshift, black hole mass, jet kinetic power from cavity power, broad-line luminosity and the ratio of core luminosity to absolute V-band magnitude (Rv), but not in the ratio of the radio core to extended flux (Rc) and the Eddington ratio. Compared with NFBs, FBs have larger mean jet power, Rc and Rv, while having smaller mean redshift, black hole mass and broad-line luminosity. These results support the fact that the beaming effect is the main reason for differences between FBs and NFBs, and that FBs are likely to have a more powerful jet. For both FBs and NFBs, there are significant correlations between the jet power and the accretion rate (traced by the broad-emission line luminosity), and between the jet power and the black hole mass. For FBs, the black hole mass does not have a significant influence on jet power, while for NFBs, both the accretion rate and black hole mass contribute to the jet power. Our results support the 'blazar sequence' and show that the synchrotron peak frequency ({nu}peak) is associated with the accretion rate but not with the black hole mass.
A gravitational lens (GL)-search program, initiated in 1990 at the Nordic Optcal Telescope (NOT), has revealed several possible GL-candidates among a sample of 168 quasars (QSOs), chosen from three lists compiled by C. Hazard, D. Reimers and J. Surdej, respectively. Some of these candidates, selected for having close companions (within 5 arcseconds), were imaged in several filters and their colours compared. Low dispersion spectra of the most promising candidates were also obtained at the NOT and ESO New Technology Telescope (NTT). None of these has proved to be strong candidates of gravitational lensing effects. We present this new sample of QSOs and combine it with previously published optical QSO samples in a statistical analysis to yield constraints on flat cosmologies and galaxy velocity dispersions.
We have searched 11304 quasars from the NVSS catalog for radio emission and obtained 2626 positive detections, of which 301 are new radio detections. We made statistical studies of the radio spectral index, radio luminosity and the fraction of radio-loud quasars versus absolute B magnitude and redshift. We found that the fraction rises between M_B_=-22 and -30 and that it increases at z=0.0 until z=0.8, then goes down at z=1.5. The degree of polarization shows no dependence on redshift.
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