The FIRST Bright QSO Survey

Abstract

The FIRST Radio Survey provides a new resource for constructing a large quasar sample. With source positions accurate to better than 1\arcsec\ and a point source sensitivity limit of 1 mJy, it reaches 50 times deeper than previous radio catalogs. We report here on the results of the pilot phase for a FIRST Bright Quasar Survey (FBQS). Based on matching the radio catalog from the initial 300 deg${}^2$ of FIRST coverage with the optical catalog from the Automated Plate Machine (APM) digitization of Palomar Sky Survey plates, we have defined a sample of 219 quasar candidates brighter than E = 17.50. We have obtained optical spectroscopy for 151 of these and classified 25 others from the literature, yielding 69 quasars or Seyfert~1 galaxies, of which 51 are new identifications. The brightest new quasar has an E magnitude of 14.6 and z = 0.91; four others are brighter than E = 16. The redshifts range from z=0.12 to 3.42. Half of the detected objects are radio quiet with L${}_{21cm}<10^{32.5}$ ergs/s. We use the results of this pilot survey to establish criteria for the FBQS that will produce a quasar search program which will be 70\% efficient and 95\% complete to a 21-cm flux density limit of 1.0 mJy.

19 pages including 4 tables, 6 figures; AASTEX 4.0. To appear in the August 1996 Astronomical Journal. Complete details of the VLA FIRST survey can be found at http://sundog.stsci.edu/

Cited by in corpus (87)

• The FIRST Bright Quasar Survey. II. 60 Nights and 1200 Spectra Later
• Properties of Radio-Selected Broad Absorption-Line Quasars from the FIRST Survey
• The Massive Hosts of Radio Galaxies Across Cosmic Time
• Colors of 2625 Quasars at 0<z<5 Measured in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Photometric System
• The Deep X-ray Radio Blazar Survey (DXRBS). I. Methods and First Results
• Composite Spectra from the FIRST Bright Quasar Survey
• The CORALS Survey I: New Estimates of the Number Density and Gas Content of Damped Lyman Alpha Systems Free from Dust Bias
• The radio-luminosity - black hole mass correlation for quasars from the FIRST Bright Quasar Survey, and a ``unification scheme'' for radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars
• FIRST-2MASS Red Quasars: Transitional Objects Emerging from the Dust
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Lens Search. V. Final Catalog from the Seventh Data Release
• The FIRST-2MASS Red Quasar Survey
• The relationship between radio luminosity and black-hole mass in optically-selected quasars
• Chandra Detection of a TypeII Quasar at z=3.288
• The FIRST Radio-Loud Broad Absorption Line QSO and Evidence for a Hidden Population of Quasars
• The ESI/KeckII Damped Lya Abundance Database
• What Determines the Depth of BALs? Keck HIRES Observations of BALQSO 1603+300
• FIRST-2MASS Sources Below the APM Detection Threshold: A Population of Highly Reddened Quasars
• Implications of Dramatic Broad Absorption Line Variability in the Quasar FBQS J1408+3054
• Radio Properties of z>4 Optically-Selected Quasars
• The FIRST Bright Quasar Survey III. The South Galactic Cap
• The Sedentary Multi-Frequency Survey. I. Statistical Identification and Cosmological Properties of HBL BL Lacs
• Optical Counterparts for 70,000 Radio Sources: APM Identifications for the FIRST Radio Survey
• Sensitive observations at 1.4 and 250 GHz of z > 5 QSOs
• Intra-night Optical Variability of Luminous Radio Quiet QSOs
• FIRST J102347.6+003841: The First Radio-Selected Cataclysmic Variable
• Occurrence and Global Properties of Narrow CIV lambda 1549 Absorption Lines in Moderate-Redshift Quasars
• Discovery of Radio-loud Broad Absorption Line Quasars Using Ultraviolet Excess and Deep Radio Selection
• Constraining Omega_0 With The Angular-Size Redshift Relation Of Double-Lobed Quasars In The FIRST Survey
• The First FIRST Gravitationally Lensed Quasar: FBQ 0951+2635
• Broad Absorption Line Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey with VLA-FIRST Radio Detections
• An I-Band-Selected Sample of Radio-Emitting Quasars: Evidence for a Large Population of Red Quasars
• Discovery of a Classic FR-II Broad Absorption Line Quasar from the FIRST Survey
• The REX survey: a search for Radio Emitting X-ray sources
• On the black-hole mass -- radio luminosity relation for flat-spectrum radio-loud quasars
• Mid-Infrared Selection of Brown Dwarfs and High-Redshift Quasars
• Radio spectra and polarisation properties of radio-loud Broad Absorption Line Quasars
• Optical Properties of Radio-selected Narrow Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies
• Dust Reddened Quasars in FIRST and UKIDSS: Beyond the Tip of the Iceberg
• Herschel Survey of the Palomar-Green QSOs at Low Redshift
• No Redshift Evolution of Dust Temperatures from $0<z<2$
• Intrinsic Absorption in Radio-Selected QSOs
• Long-term Optical Variability of Radio-Selected Quasars from the FIRST Survey
• Optical and radio properties of giant radio quasars: Central black hole characteristics
• Finding Quasars behind the Galactic Plane. I. Candidate Selections with Transfer Learning
• QSO 2359-1241: A Bright, Highly Polarized, Radio-Moderate, Reddened, Low-Ionization Broad Absorption Line Quasar
• The WISE-2MASS Survey: Red Quasars Into the Radio Quiet Regime
• A Spectroscopic Survey of the Fields of 28 Strong Gravitational Lenses: The Redshift Catalog
• Evidence for a population of beamed radio intermediate quasars
• The Luminosity Function of bright QSOs at z~4 and implications for the cosmic ionizing background
• A Census of Quasar-Intrinsic Absorption in the Hubble Space Telescope Archive: Systems from High Resolution Echelle Spectra
• Photometric Classification of quasars from RCS-2 using Random Forest
• Catalog of Radio Galaxies with z>0.3. I:Construction of the Sample
• Identification of BASS DR3 Sources as Stars, Galaxies and Quasars by XGBoost
• The Kast Ground Based UV Spectral Survey of 79 QSOs at Redshift 2 for Lyman Alpha Forest and Metal Absorption
• The Gravitational Lens Candidate FBQ 1633+3134
• The First Observations of the Second Brightest Quasar
• Decline of the space density of quasars between z=2 and z=4
• High-redshift quasars along the Main Sequence
• The Optical/Near-IR Colors of Broad Absorption Line Quasars, Including the Candidate Radio-Loud BAL Quasar 1556+3517
• Discovery of a Radio-loud/Radio-quiet Binary Quasar
• Rest-frame optical properties of luminous, radio-selected, broad absorption line quasars
• The preferentially magnified active nucleus in IRAS F10214+4724 - III. VLBI observations of the radio core
• New quasars behind the Magellanic Clouds. Spectroscopic confirmation of near-infrared selected candidates
• FERMI transient J1544-0649: a flaring radio-weak BL Lac
• A Survey for Large Separation Lensed FIRST Quasars
• A Spectroscopic Survey of the Fields of 28 Strong Gravitational Lenses: Implications for $H_0$
• A search for distant radio-loud quasars in the CLASS survey: three new radio-selected quasars at z>4
• Seoul National University Bright Quasar Survey in Optical (SNUQSO) I: First Phase Observations and Results
• A Study of Quasar Radio Emission from the VLA FIRST Survey
• An Extraordinary Scattered Broad Emission Line in a Type 2 QSO
• AGN-selected clusters as revealed by weak lensing
• Medium-resolution Optical and Near-Infrared Spectral Atlas of 16 2MASS-selected NIR-red Active Galactic Nuclei at $z\sim 0.3$
• Neural-network selection of high-redshift radio quasars, and the luminosity function at z~4
• Active Galactic Nuclei at the Crossroads of Astrophysics
• Investigating the radio-loud phase of broad absorption line quasars
• The SCUBA-2 Web Survey: I. Observations of CO(3-2) in hyper-luminous QSO fields
• A sample of radio-loud QSOs at redshift ~ 4
• A Survey for Large Separation Lensed FIRST Quasars, II. Magnification Bias and Redshift Distribution
• A multi-wavelength continuum characterization of high-redshift broad absorption line quasars
• A FIRST-APM-SDSS survey for high-redshift radio QSOs
• Quasi-Simultaneous Two Band Optical Micro-Variability of Luminous Radio-Quiet QSOs
• The loud and the quiet: searching for radio counterparts of two radio-weak BL Lac candidates with VLBI
• Rest-frame optical continua of L ~ L*, z>3 quasars: probing the faint end of the high z quasar luminosity function
• Exploring the links between quasar winds and radio emission along the Main Sequence at high redshift
• XMM-Newton Detection of the Rare FR II BAL Quasar FIRST J101614.3+520916
• Disentangling the nature of the prototype radio weak BL Lac: Contemporaneous multifrequency observations of WISE J141046.00 + 740511.2
• The Gamma-ray bright BL Lac object RX J1211+2242