Related papers: The Contribution from Scattered Light to Quasar Ga…
Scattered light echoes from variable and cataclysmic stars offer one of the most effective means to probe the structure and composition of circumtellar and interstellar media. I build a simple model of light-echo surface brightness by…
We report on ESO--VLT adaptive optics imaging of one radio-loud quasar at z $\sim$ 3. In spite of the large distance of the object we are able to detect its surrounding extended nebulosity the properties of which are consistent with an…
The distribution on the sky of clusters of galaxies shows significant association with relatively nearby, large, active galaxies. The pattern is that of clusters paired equidistant across a central galaxy with the apparent magnitudes and…
We present a study of the distribution of quasars and radio galaxies in the plane (viewing angle - redshift) in the framework of the evolutionary unified scheme (Vagnetti et al. 1991). Results are presented for some illustrative cases,…
Recent measurements of the temperature of the sky in the radio band, combined with literature data, have convincingly shown the existence of a cosmic radio background with an amplitude of $\sim 1$ K at 1 GHz and a spectral energy…
We present a measurement of the star formation properties of a uniform sample of mid-IR selected, unobscured and obscured quasars (QSO1s and QSO2s) in the Bo\"otes survey region. We use an spectral energy distribution (SED) analysis for…
We examine the clustering of galaxies around a sample of 20 luminous low redshift (z<0.30) quasars observed with the Wide Field Camera-2 on the Hubble Space Telescope. The HST resolution makes possible galaxy identification brighter than…
Scattering by dust grains in our Galaxy can produce X-ray halos, visible as expanding rings, around GRBs. This has been observed in three GRBs to date, allowing to derive accurate distances for the dust clouds as well as some constraints on…
We investigate different scenarios for the origin of the extragalactic radio background. The surface brightness of the background, as reported by the ARCADE 2 collaboration, is several times higher than that which would result from…
We investigated the star formation history and stellar populations of a sample of 205 Type I quasar host galaxies (0.1$<$z$<$0.35) and compared with normal (non-active) galaxies of the same mass and redshift within the volume of the Galaxy…
The relationship between quasars and their host galaxies provides clues on how supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and massive galaxies are jointly assembled. To elucidate this connection, we measure the structural and photometric properties…
This paper presents new investigations on coherent scattering in the forward direction (orders of magnitude; conservation of energy; dependence of scattered light on geometry and wavelength), and on how scattered light contamination in the…
The observed number counts of quasars may be explained either by long-lived activity within rare massive hosts, or by short-lived activity within smaller, more common hosts. It has been argued that quasar lifetimes may therefore be inferred…
X-ray bright quasars might be used to trace dust in the circumgalactic and intergalactic medium through the phenomenon of X-ray scattering, which is observed around Galactic objects whose light passes through a sufficient column of…
Over the past few years, we have been collecting data with the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) on the galaxy environments around active galactic nuclei (AGN). Here we present some results from a sample of 21 radio-loud and 20 radio-quiet…
We present a study of the morphology and intensity of star formation in the host galaxies of eight Palomar-Green quasars using observations with the Hubble Space Telescope. Our observations are motivated by recent evidence for a close…
We investigate the variation of galaxy clustering with luminosity using the recently completed SSRS2 sample. Clustering measurements based on the two-point correlation function and the variance of counts in cells reveal the existence of a…
Recent studies have found that obscured quasars cluster more strongly and are thus hosted by dark matter haloes of larger mass than their unobscured counterparts. These results pose a challenge for the simplest unification models, in which…
We present the results of near-infrared H-band (1.65 microns) imaging of 19 steep spectrum radio quasars (SSRQ) in the redshift range 0.5 < z < 1.0. This sample of SSRQs is matched with our previously studied complete sample of 20 flat…
We study the dependence of the number density and properties of quasars on the background galaxy density using the currently largest spectroscopic datasets of quasars and galaxies. We construct a galaxy number density field smoothed over…