English

Near infrared observations of quasars with extended ionized envelopes

Astrophysics 2009-10-31 v1

Abstract

We have observed a sample of 15 and 8 quasars with redshifts between 0.11 and 0.87 (mean value 0.38) in the J and K' bands respectively. Eleven of the quasars were previously known to be associated with extended emission line regions. After deconvolution of the image, substraction of the PSF when possible, and identification of companions with the help of HST archive images when available, extensions are seen for at least eleven quasars. However, average profiles are different from that of the PSF in only four objects, for which a good fit is obtained with an r1/4r^{1/4} law, suggesting that the underlying galaxies are ellipticals. Redshifts were available in the literature for surrounding objects in five quasar fields. For these objects, one to five companion galaxies were found. One quasar even belongs to a richness class 1 cluster. Most other quasars in our sample have nearby galaxies in projection which may also be companions. Environmental effects are therefore probably important to account for the properties of these objects.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9810012,
  title  = {Near infrared observations of quasars with extended ionized envelopes},
  author = {I. Marquez and F. Durret and P. Petitjean},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9810012},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in A&AS