Related papers: Identifying type II quasars at intermediate redshi…
We present the observation of a new intermediate redshift damped Lyman-alpha absorption system candidate, discovered in the course of a spectroscopic follow-up for identifying the sources detected in a 150 A wide bandpass UV-imaging survey…
The European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) is a 4-m class survey telescope for wide-field near-infrared imaging. VISTA is currently running a suite of six public surveys, which will…
Being observed only one billion years after the Big Bang, z ~ 7 quasars are a unique opportunity for exploring the early Universe. However, only two z ~ 7 quasars have been discovered in near-infrared surveys: the quasars ULAS J1120+0641…
We use UKIRT and ASCA observations to determine the nature of a high redshift (z=2.35) narrow-line AGN, previously discovered by Almaini et al. (1995). The UKIRT observations show a broad Halpha line while no Hbeta line is detected. This…
Context. Quasars are spatially stationary, and they are essential objects in astrometry when defining reference frames. However, the census of quasars is far from complete. Mid-infared colors can be used to find quasar candidates because…
Upcoming astronomical surveys such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will rely on photometric classification to identify the majority of the transients and variables that they discover. We present a set of techniques for…
Machine learning techniques, specifically the k-nearest neighbour algorithm applied to optical band colours, have had some success in predicting photometric redshifts of quasi-stellar objects (QSOs): Although the mean of differences between…
I describe two novel techniques originally devised to select strongly lensed quasar candidates in wide-field surveys. The first relies on outlier selection in optical and mid-infrared magnitude space; the second combines mid-infrared colour…
We report on the first SCUBA detection of a Type 2 QSO at z=3.660 in the Chandra Deep Field South. This source is X-ray absorbed, shows only narrow emission lines in the optical spectrum and is detected in the sub-mm: it is the ideal…
We search for ultra-luminous Quasi-Stellar Objects (QSOs) at high redshift using photometry from the SkyMapper Southern Survey Data Release 3 (DR3), in combination with 2MASS, VHS DR6, VIKING DR5, AllWISE, and CatWISE2020, as well as…
Studying the stellar mass, age, luminosity, star-formation rate, and impact parameter of quasar absorber host galaxies can aid in the understanding of galaxy formation and evolution as well as in testing their models. We derive the Spectral…
Quasar absorption line analysis is critical for studying gas and dust components and their physical and chemical properties as well as the evolution and formation of galaxies in the early universe. Ca II absorbers, which are one of the…
Many open questions in X-ray astronomy are limited by the relatively small number of objects in uniform optically-identified samples, especially when rare subclasses are considered, or subsets isolated to search for evolution or…
We use Virtual Observatory (VO) tools to identify optically faint, obscured (i.e., type 2) active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the two Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) fields. By employing publicly available X-ray and optical…
We present Gemini/GMOS-S multi-object spectroscopy of 31 galaxy cluster candidates at redshifts between 0.2 and 1.0 and centered on QSO sight-lines taken from Lopez et al. (2008). The targets were selected based on the presence of a…
The discovery of multiply-imaged gravitationally lensed QSOs is fundamental to many astronomical and cosmological studies. However, these objects are rare and challenging to discover due to requirements of high-angular resolution…
We present the VST ATLAS Quasar Survey, consisting of $\sim1,229,000$ quasar (QSO) candidates with $16<g<22.5$ over $\sim4700$ deg$^2$. The catalogue is based on VST ATLAS$+$NEOWISE imaging surveys and aims to reach a QSO sky density of…
AIMS: We present a sample of candidate quasars selected using the KX-technique. The data cover 0.68 deg^2 of the X-ray Multi-Mirror (XMM) Large-Scale Structure (LSS) survey area where overlapping multi-wavelength imaging data permits an…
Type-2 quasars (QSO2s) are AGN seen through a significant amount of dust and gas that obscures the central supermassive black hole and the broad line region. Despite this, recent mid-infrared spectra of the central 0.5-1.1 kpc of five QSO2s…
This paper describes the methodology currently being implemented in the EIS pipeline for analysing optical/infrared multi-colour data. The aim is to identify different classes of objects as well as possible undesirable features associated…