HST/ACS Snapshot Imaging of 29 Post-Starburst Quasars

Details HST/ACS Snapshot Imaging of 29 Post-Starburst Quasars HST/ACS Snapshot Imaging of 29 Post-Starburst Quasars

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21348409c&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #484.09; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.454

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Scientific paper

We present quantitative host galaxy measurements of 29 post-starburst quasars (PSQs) from a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) Wide Field Channel (WFC) Snapshot program. PSQs are broad-lined AGN that also possess the spectral signatures of massive, moderate-aged stellar populations (in excess of ten billion solar masses and ages of hundreds of Myrs). The aim of our study is to test the hypothesis that PSQs are an intermediate phase in the life of a quasar/galaxy. To this end we characterize the morphologies, bulge luminosities and quasar to host galaxy light contributions via two-dimensional image analysis of the PSF subtracted images. We look for trends between the host galaxy measurements and the morphology classifications. The HST/ACS-F606W (broad V-band at 0.05''/pixel) SNAP images show that while some of the PSQs are obviously quasars living in spiral galaxies, others appear to be disturbed ellipticals inviting us to classify the PSQs as undisturbed spirals, merger or post-merger events. In two of the images we see obvious merging and about 40% have neighbors within 10''. The vast majority of systems show signs of interaction/merger activity, such as, tidal tails, shells, star-forming knots and asymmetries. These results are consistent with merging scenarios which build larger elliptical galaxies via mergers of smaller spiral ones.
We acknowledge support from the US National Science Foundation through grant AST 05-07781 and NASA through grant NNG05GE84G. S. L. Cales was supported in part by NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship.

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