The FIRST-2MASS Red Quasar Survey

By E. Glikman, D. Helfand, R. White, Robert H. Becker, M. Gregg, M. Lacy. 2007

134 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Combining radio observations with optical and infrared color selection, demonstrated in our pilot study to be an efficient selection algorithm for finding red quasars, we have obtained optical and infrared spectroscopy for 120 objects in a complete sample of 156 candidates from a sky area of 2716 deg2. Consistent with our initial results, we find that our selection criteria (J - K > 1.7, R - K > 4.0) yield a ~50% success rate for discovering quasars substantially redder than those found in optical surveys. Comparison with UVX- and optical color-selected samples shows that ≳10% of the quasars are missed in a magnitude-limited survey. Simultaneous two-frequency radio observations for part of the sample indicate that a synchrotron continuum component is ruled out as a significant contributor to reddening the quasars' spectra. We go on to estimate extinctions for our objects assuming that their red colors are caused by dust. Continuum fits and Balmer decrements suggest E(B - V) values ranging from near zero to 2.5 mag. Correcting the K-band magnitudes for these extinctions, we find that for K ≤ 14.0, red quasars make up between 25% and 60% of the underlying quasar population; owing to the incompleteness of 2MASS at fainter K-band magnitudes, we can only set a lower limit to the radio-detected red quasar population of >20%-30%.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6690dd10162c662e00858d56985bae5909bd730a

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. D. M. Alexander
2. P. Hopkins
3. W. N. Brandt
4. R. Hickox
5. L. Hernquist
6. Mara Salvato
7. A. Koekemoer
8. P. Capak

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. D. M. Alexander
2. R. Hickox
3. A. Comastri
4. P. Padovani
5. T. Miyaji
6. Mara Salvato
7. G. Zamorani
8. M. Brusa

Citations in the corpus

• THE CHANDRA COSMOS SURVEY. III. OPTICAL AND INFRARED IDENTIFICATION OF X-RAY POINT SOURCES (2012, result): “…on average blue color (〈R − K〉 =3.27) in the optical and soft spectra in the X-ray (〈HR〉 =-0.29, including upper limits), even if a tail at higher HR andR− K is present, in agreement with other findings of red quasars with broad lines (Glikman et al. 2007, Urrutia et al. 2008, Young et al. 2009).”
• Active galactic nuclei: what’s in a name? (2017, methodology): “Nevertheless, NIR has been useful in the identification of red AGN samples, e.g. Glikman et al. (2007) using 2MASS, FIRST and R-band photometry, as well as the heavily reddened quasars of Banerji et al. (2012, 2015) found in the UKIDSS survey.”
• THE DISCOVERY OF THE FIRST “CHANGING LOOK” QUASAR: NEW INSIGHTS INTO THE PHYSICS AND PHENOMENOLOGY OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2014, methodology): “…determine if we can reproduce the observed 2010 BOSS spectrum.3 We use the specfit-provided Cardelli et al. (1989) extinction curve, with RV set to 3.1 (Osterbrock & Ferland 2006); we note that different choices of RV do not affect the extinction curve in the optical bandpass (Glikman et al. 2007).”
• Evidence for Quasar Activity Triggered by Galaxy Mergers in HST Observations of Dust-reddened Quasars (2007, methodology): “The methodology and preliminary results of this sample are described in Glikman et al. (2004) and the final results in Glikman et al. (2007).”
• THE WIDE-FIELD INFRARED SURVEY EXPLORER (WISE): MISSION DESCRIPTION AND INITIAL ON-ORBIT PERFORMANCE (2010, methodology): “Estimates of the fraction of AGN missing from optical/UV selected samples vary considerably, ranging from 15 to over 50% (Richardset al. 2003; Brown et al. 2007; Glikman et al. 2004, 2007).”