UV-bright quasars Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Syphers D.
  2. Anderson S.F.
  3. Zheng W.
  4. Haggard D.
  5. Meiksin A.
  6. Chiu K.,Hogan C.
  7. Schneider D.P.
  8. York D.G.
  9. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

Investigations of HeII Ly{alpha} (304{AA} rest-frame) absorption toward a half-dozen quasars at z~3-4 have demonstrated the great potential of helium studies of the intergalactic medium, but the current critically small sample size of clean sightlines for the HeII Gunn-Peterson test limits confidence in cosmological inferences, and a larger sample is required. Although the unobscured quasar sightlines to high redshift are extremely rare, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR6 provides thousands of z>2.8 quasars. We have cross-correlated these SDSS quasars with the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) GR2/GR3 to establish a catalog of 200 higher-confidence (~70% secure) cases of quasars at z=2.8-5.1 potentially having surviving far-UV (rest-frame) flux. We also catalog another 112 likely far-UV-bright quasars from GALEX cross-correlation with other (non-SDSS) quasar compilations. Reconnaissance UV prism observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) of 24 of our SDSS/GALEX candidates confirm 12 as detected in the far-UV, with at least nine having flux extending to very near the HeII break; with refinements our success rate is even higher. Our SDSS/GALEX selection approach is thereby confirmed to be an order of magnitude more efficient than previous HeII quasar searches, more than doubles the number of spectroscopically confirmed clean sightlines to high redshift, and provides a resource list of hundreds of high-confidence sightlines for upcoming HeII and other far-UV studies from the HST. Our reconnaissance HST prism spectra suggest some far-UV diversity, confirming the need to obtain a large sample of independent quasar sightlines across a broad redshift range to assess such issues as the epoch(s) of helium reionization, while averaging over individual-object pathology and/or cosmic variance.

Keywords
  1. quasars
  2. ultraviolet-photometry
  3. redshifted
  4. surveys
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2009ApJ...690.1181S
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/690/1181
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/690/1181
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.16901181

Access

Web browser access HTML
https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/690/1181
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/690/1181
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/690/1181
IVOA Table Access TAP
https://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tap
Run SQL-like queries with TAP-enabled clients (e.g., TOPCAT).
IVOA Cone Search SCS
For use with a cone search client (e.g., TOPCAT).
https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/690/1181/table2?
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/690/1181/table2?
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/690/1181/table2?
IVOA Cone Search SCS
For use with a cone search client (e.g., TOPCAT).
https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/690/1181/table1?
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/690/1181/table1?
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/690/1181/table1?

History

2010-05-04T09:45:41Z
Resource record created
2010-05-04T09:45:41Z
Created
2017-11-28T13:21:08Z
Updated

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr