Spectroscopy of Quasar Candidates from SDSS Commissioning Data
arXiv:astro-ph/9812280 · doi:10.1063/1.58612
Abstract
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has obtained images in five broad-band colors for several hundred square degrees. We present color-color diagrams for stellar objects, and demonstrate that quasars are easily distinguished from stars by their distinctive colors. Follow-up spectroscopy in less than ten nights of telescope time has yielded 22 new quasars, 9 of them at , and one with , the second highest-redshift quasar yet known. Roughly 80% of the high-redshift quasar candidates selected by color indeed turn out to be high-redshift quasars.
4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of "After the Dark Ages: When Galaxies were Young (the Universe at 2<z<5)", 9th Annual October Astrophysics Conference in Maryland