Related papers: Variability in Quasar Light Curves: using quasars …
We investigate the luminosity dependence of quasar clustering, inspired by numerical simulations of galaxy mergers that incorporate black hole growth. These simulations have motivated a new interpretation of the quasar luminosity function.…
The inter-band correlations between optical/UV and X-ray luminosities of active galactic nuclei (AGN) are important for understanding the disc-coronal connection, as well as using AGN as standard candles for cosmology. It is conventional to…
We present a new and simple technique for selecting extensive, complete and pure quasar samples, based on their intrinsic variability. We parametrize the single-band variability by a power-law model for the light-curve structure function,…
We performed R-band time series observations of the young, metal rich open cluster NGC 2301 for 12 nights in Feb. 2004. B images were also obtained and color magnitude diagrams, having limits of R=19.5 and B=21.5, were produced. Only asmall…
We have recently demonstrated that the non-linear relation between ultraviolet and X-ray luminosity in quasars is very tight (with an intrinsic dispersion of ~0.2 dex), once contaminants (e.g. dust reddening, X-ray absorption), variability,…
We analyze the X-ray variability of 264 Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectroscopic quasars using the Chandra public archive. This data set consists of quasars with spectroscopic redshifts out to z~5 and covers rest-frame time scales up to Delta…
Using a sample of over 25000 spectroscopically confirmed quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we show how quasar variability in the rest frame optical/UV regime depends upon rest frame time lag, luminosity, rest wavelength, redshift,…
Observations with the Wide-Field Camera of the Hubble Space Telescope are presented for a representative sample of 20 intrinsically luminous quasars with redshifts smaller than 0.30. These observations show that luminous quasars occur in…
We use 62185 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5 sample to explore the relationship between black hole mass and luminosity. Black hole masses were estimated based on the widths of their H{\beta}, MgII and CIV lines and…
In previous studies we have shown that the optical variability of quasars increases, on average, with redshift. We explained this dependance in terms of a hardening of the spectrum during bright phases, coupled with the increase of the…
It has been found that some quasars are undergoing quasi-periodic variations (most of them with damped amplitudes) in optical bands from long-term monitoring campaigns, but how to explain the origin of such light curve variations still…
In order to investigate the dependence of quasar optical-UV variability on fundamental physical parameters like black hole mass, we have matched quasars from the QUEST1 variability survey with broad-lined objects from the SDSS. Black hole…
We investigate the use of type Ic Super Luminous Supernovae as standardizable candles and distance indicators. Their appeal as cosmological probes stems from their remarkable peak luminosities, hot blackbody temperatures and bright…
We report on Chandra observations of a sample of 11 optically luminous (Mb<-28.5) quasars at z=3.96-4.55 selected from the Palomar Digital Sky Survey and the Automatic Plate Measuring Facility Survey. These are among the most luminous z>4…
Detecting any evolution of dimensionless in the ratios of physical quantities, such as the fine structure constant, would prove that the Weak Equivalence Principle is violated and lead to a paradigm shift in physics. High resolution…
We have searched in the XMM-Newton public archive for quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) First Data Release (DR1), and found 55 lying in the field of a XMM-Newton observation with exposure times >20 ksec (as of August, 2004).…
We have searched for microlensing variability in the light curves of five gravitationally lensed quasars with well-determined time delays: SBS 1520+530, FBQ 0951+2635, RX J0911+0551, B1600+434 and HE 2149-2745. By comparing the light curve…
We compare distance measurements obtained from two distance indicators, Super- novae observations (standard candles) and Baryon acoustic oscillation data (standard rulers). The Union2 sample of supernovae with BAO data from SDSS, 6dFGS and…
Distance measurements beyond geometrical and semi-geometrical methods, rely mainly on standard candles. As the name suggests, these objects have known luminosities by virtue of their intrinsic proprieties and play a major role in our…
We define here a standard candle to determine the distance of clusters of galaxies and to investigate their peculiar velocities by using the n^{th} rank galaxy (magnitude m$_n$). We address the question of the universality of the luminosity…