Related papers: Finding the Most Distant Quasars Using Bayesian Se…

Quasars are very important in materializing the reference frame. The excess emission of AGNs (active galactic nuclei) in the mid infrared band can be used to identify quasar candidates. As extremely distant and point like objects, quasars…

The rare close projection of two quasars on the sky provides the opportunity to study the host galaxy environment of a foreground quasar in absorption against the continuum emission of a background quasar. For over a decade the "Quasars…

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…

We present a catalog of 100,563 unresolved, UV-excess (UVX) quasar candidates to g=21 from 2099 deg^2 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release One (DR1) imaging data. Existing spectra of 22,737 sources reveals that 22,191 (97.6%)…

Chandra snapshot observations of the three most distant quasars then known, at redshifts 5.82, 5.99, and 6.28, gave signficant detections even in the short, 6 -- 8 ks, observations. The X-ray to optical luminosity ratios indicate that…

The time domain is the emerging forefront of astronomical research with new facilities and instruments providing unprecedented amounts of data on the temporal behavior of astrophysical populations. Dealing with the size and complexity of…

All galaxies once passed through a hyperluminous quasar phase powered by accretion onto a supermassive black hole. But because these episodes are brief, quasars are rare objects typically separated by cosmological distances. In a survey for…

So far, roughly 40 quasars with redshifts greater than z=6 have been discovered. Each quasar contains a black hole with a mass of about one billion solar masses ($10^9 M_\odot$). The existence of such black holes when the Universe was less…

Microlensing studies of quasars can reveal dark matter lumps over a broad mass spectrum; we highlight the importance of monitoring quasars which are seen through the halos of low-redshift galaxies. For these configurations microlensing by…

Quasars at cosmic dawn provide powerful probes of the formation and growth of the earliest supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the universe, their connections to galaxy and structure formation, and the evolution of the intergalactic medium…

The most distant quasars known, at redshifts z=6, generally have properties indistinguishable from those of lower-redshift quasars in the rest-frame ultraviolet/optical and X-ray bands. This puzzling result suggests that these distant…

Quasars at z>4 provide direct information on the first massive structures to form in the Universe. Recent ground-based optical surveys (e.g., the Sloan Digital Sky Survey) have discovered large numbers of high-redshift quasars, increasing…

It is currently unknown whether the Universe was reionized by quasars or stars at z>5. We point out that quasars can be best distinguished from stellar systems by their X-ray emission. Based on a simple hierarchical CDM model, we predict…

We present the results of our recent Hubble Space Telescope imaging study, in which we have successfully deconvolved host and nuclear flux for the some of the most luminous quasars in the Universe. Host morphologies have been recovered for…

We present a catalog of 1,172,157 quasar candidates selected from the photometric imaging data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The objects are all point sources to a limiting magnitude of i=21.3 from 8417 sq. deg. of imaging from…

The discovery of luminous quasars at redshifts up to 7.5 demonstrates the existence of several billion M_sun supermassive black holes (SMBHs) less than a billion years after the Big Bang. They are accompanied by intense star formation in…

The discovery of the first strongly lensed $(\mu \approx 50)$ quasar at $z>6$ (J0439+1634) represents a breakthrough in our understanding of the early Universe. We derive the theoretical consequences of the new discovery. We predict that…

Microquasars are compact objects (stellar-mass black holes and neutron stars) that mimic, on a smaller scale, many of the phenomena seen in quasars. Their discovery provided new insights into the physics of relativistic jets observed…

The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) is the first of a new generation of hemispheric imaging projects to extend the work of the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) by reaching three magnitudes deeper in YJHK imaging, to K=18.2…

Context. Observations of quasars shining through foreground galaxies, offer a way to probe the dust extinction curves of distant galaxies. Interesting objects for this study are found in strong gravitational lensing systems, where the…