The Low‐Resolution Spectrograph of the Hobby‐Eberly Telescope. II. Observations of Quasar Candidates from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey1, 2

• Published in: Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific Vol. 112; no. 767; pp. 6 - 11
• Main Authors: Schneider, D. P., Hill, Gary J., Fan, X., Ramsey, L. W., MacQueen, P. J., Weedman, D. W., Booth, J. A., Eracleous, M., Gunn, J. E., Lupton, R. H., Adams, M. T., Bastian, S., Bender, R., Berman, E., Brinkmann, J., Csabai, I., Federwitz, G., Gurbani, V., Hennessy, G. S., Hill, G. M., Hindsley, R. B., Ivezić, Z., Knapp, G. R., Lamb, D. Q., Lindenmeyer, C., Mantsch, P., Nance, C., Nash, T., Pier, J. R., Rechenmacher, R., Rhoads, B., Rivetta, C. H., Robinson, E. L., Roman, B., Sergey, G., Shetrone, M., Stoughton, C., Strauss, M. A., Szokoly, G. P., Tucker, D. L., Wesley, G., Willick, J., Worthington, P., York, D. G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The University of Chicago Press 01.01.2000
• Subjects: Astronomical objects; Calibration; Emission spectra; Pixels; Quasars; Red shift; Reflecting telescopes; Spectrophotometry; Telescopes; Wavelengths
• ISSN: 0004-6280; 1538-3873
• DOI: 10.1086/316491

This paper describes spectra of quasar candidates acquired during the commissioning phase of the Low‐Resolution Spectrograph of the Hobby‐Eberly Telescope. The objects were identified as possible quasars from multicolor image data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The 10 sources had typicalr \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape $\arcmin$\end{document} magnitudes of 19–20, except for one extremely red object with \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape $r^{\prime }\approx 23$ \end{document} . The data, obtained with exposure times between 10 and 25 minutes, reveal that the spectra of four candidates are essentially featureless and are not quasars, five are quasars with redshifts between 2.92 and 4.15 (including one broad absorption line quasar), and the red source is a very late M star or early L dwarf.