High-Redshift Quasars and Other Peculiar-Color Objects in DPOSS

Other

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

Scientific paper

The Digital POSS-II (DPOSS) and the resulting Palomar-Norris Sky Catalog (PNSC) provide an excellent, large data set in which one can search for rare types of objects, distinguished from the majority of detected sources through some set of properties, such as the colors. We use gri color selection to pick out quasar candidates at z > 4 from the large number of stellar objects detected in the survey. Down to the magnitude limit used for this search (r < 19.5(m) ), there is roughly 1 quasar at z > 4 per million foreground stars, at moderate to high Galactic latitude. Our selection procedures produce only about 10 false-alarm candidates per quasar, with the majority of contaminants being compact, high-surface brightness galaxies at modest redshifts. To date, almost 40 quasars at z > 4 have been found in DPOSS. They are used for a variety of follow-up studies by ourselves and other groups, including searches for protogalaxies and protoclusters at z > 4, as probes of the intergalactic medium at very high redshifts, etc. One still tentative, but potentially very exciting result is a hint of clustering among these quasars on ~ 100 h(-1) comoving Mpc scale. In addition to quasar candidates, we look for stellar objects with extreme red (r-i) colors, ostensibly stars at the bottom of the main sequence or isolated brown dwarfs, very blue stars, and other objects with peculiar colors. In some cases, apparently unusual colors were an artifact of a strong variability over the time baseline between the different plate exposures. In a data set this large (ultimately > 10(9) sources), there is even an exciting possibility of discovering some previously unknown, rare type of objects. For example, we have found one object with an extremely unusual spectrum, whose nature we still do not understand.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

High-Redshift Quasars and Other Peculiar-Color Objects in DPOSS does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with High-Redshift Quasars and Other Peculiar-Color Objects in DPOSS, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and High-Redshift Quasars and Other Peculiar-Color Objects in DPOSS will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-810357

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.