Active Galactic Nuclei in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. I. Sample Selection

By Lei Hao, M. Strauss, Christy A. Tremonti, David Schlegel, T. Heckman, G. Kauffmann, M. Blanton, Xiaohui Fan, James E. Gunn, P. Hall and 11 more. 2005

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We have compiled a large sample of low-redshift active galactic nuclei (AGNs) identified via their emission-line characteristics from the spectroscopic data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Since emission lines are often contaminated by stellar absorption lines, we developed an objective and efficient method of subtracting the stellar continuum from every galaxy spectrum before making emission-line measurements. The distribution of the measured Hα FWHM values of emission-line galaxies is strongly bimodal, with two populations separated at about 1200 km s-1. This feature provides a natural separation between narrow-line and broad-line AGNs. The narrow-line AGNs are identified using standard emission-line ratio diagnostic diagrams. There are 1317 broad-line and 3074 narrow-line AGNs identified from about 100,000 galaxy spectra selected over 1151 deg2. This sample is used in a companion paper to determine the emission-line luminosity function of AGNs.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/26eb92c771982466e5735f5db6807b07511c7125

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THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY QUASAR CATALOG. V. SEVENTH DATA RELEASE (2010, background): “…in the catalog are less susceptible to host galaxy contamination than are fixed-aperture measurements, the nucleus of the host galaxy can still contribute appreciably to this measurement for the lowest luminosity entries in the catalog (e.g., Hao et al. 2005; Bentz et al. 2006; Croom et al. 2009).”
Metallicity and Nuclear Star Formation in Nearby Galaxy Pairs: Evidence for Tidally Induced Gas Flows (2005, background): “An AGN contribution increases [O III] relative to [O II] or Hβ (Baldwin et al. 1981; Veilleux & Osterbrock 1987; Hao et al. 2005; Ho 2005), thus increasing the R23 ratio and causing the the resulting metallicity to be overestimated.”
The Mass Function of Active Black Holes in the Local Universe (2007, methodology): “We attempt to follow closely the technique of Hao et al. (2005b) for ease of direct comparison.”
A CATALOG OF QUASAR PROPERTIES FROM SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY DATA RELEASE 7 (2010, background): “This choice is motivated by the results in Hao et al. (2005), but is still somewhat arbitrary; narrow lines broader than this threshold are not unusual.”
Semi‐empirical analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies – III. How to distinguish AGN hosts (2006, background): “The SDSS is revolutionizing our ways to attack this problem (e.g. Fukugita et al. 2004; Heckman et al. 2004; Kauffmann et al. 2004; Best et al. 2005; Hao et al. 2005a,b; Pasquali, Kauffmann & Heckman 2005), and deeper surveys will follow.”
SPACE DENSITY OF OPTICALLY SELECTED TYPE 2 QUASARS (2008, methodology): “Hao et al. (2005b) found that type 2 AGNs make up about 60% of the AGN population at L[O iii] ∼ 106 L , and about 30% at ∼3 × 107 L .”
What drives the growth of black holes (2011, background): “…in the local Universe, with ≈ 5–10% of nearby galaxies found to clearly host optical AGN activity (i.e., identified as Seyfert galaxies from their optical emission-line properties; e.g., Veilleux & Osterbrock 1987; Kewley et al. 2001, 2006; Maiolino & Rieke 1995; Ho et al. 1997a; Hao et al. 2005.”
Nuclear Activity in Nearby Galaxies (2008, methodology): “For comparison, I have overlaid the Hα luminosity function of z ∼< 0.35 Seyfert galaxies derived from the SDSS by Hao et al. (2005b).”
A New Sample of Low-Mass Black Holes in Active Galaxies (2007, methodology): “Continuum subtraction, which is crucial to uncover low-contras broad lines, is performed with the principle component analysis method developed by Hao et al. (2005).”
Biases in Virial Black Hole Masses: An SDSS Perspective (2007, methodology): “The FWHM of the narrow component is constrained to be less than 1200 km s−1, and that of the broad component is constrained to be larger than 1200 km s−1 (e.g., Hao et al. 2005).”
A Systematic Analysis of Fe II Emission in Quasars: Evidence for Inflow to the Central Black Hole (2008, methodology): “But it has been used empirically for nonlinear models and seems to be effective (e.g., see Hao et al. 2005).”
Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Spectroscopic analysis (2013, result): “These results are consistent with those demonstrated f om the SDSS (Kauffmann et al. 2003b; Hao et al. 2005).”
Semi-empirical analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies – II. The bimodality of the galaxy population revisited (2005, methodology): “…could be questioned (see Brinchmann et al. 2004; Stasińska et al. 2006), we have adopted it for easy reference to recently published work (e.g. Brinchmann et al. 2004; Hao et al. 2005) to distinguish normal star-forming galaxies (below the curve) from galaxies hosting an active nucleus (above it).”
VERY STRONG EMISSION-LINE GALAXIES IN THE WFC3 INFRARED SPECTROSCOPIC PARALLEL SURVEY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR HIGH-REDSHIFT GALAXIES, (2011, result): “This is consistent with the fraction found in z ∼ 0.3−2 Lyα emitters (Atek et al. 2009; Scarlata et al. 2009; Nilsson et al. 2009; Cowie et al. 2010, 2011), and what is locally found in emission-line galaxy samples (e.g. Hao et al. 2005).”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog. IV. Fifth Data Release (2007, background): “…as type 2 quasars, Seyfert galaxies, and BL Lacertae objects; studies of these sources in the SDSS can be found in Zakamska et al. (2004) (type 2 quasars), Kauffmann et al. (2003) and Hao et al. (2005) (Seyfert galaxies), and Collinge et al. (2005) and Anderson et al. (2007) (BL Lacertae objects).”