New quasar surveys with WIRO: Searching for high redshift (z~6) quasar candidates
Abstract
High redshift quasars (z~6) are of great interest to fundamental astronomy due to the information they hold about the early universe. With their low number density in the sky, however, they are elusive objects. Reported here is our search for these high redshift quasars using the Wyoming Infrared Observatory (WIRO) 2.3m telescope. We search for potential candidates that have been detected by surveys such as WISE, which have been mostly redshifted out of the optical. The main emission feature of these quasars (the Lyman-Alpha line at ~1216 Angstroms rest-frame) would be redshifted to the z-band or beyond. This means that the quasars should have very low levels of i-band flux. These objects are known as i-dropouts. By imaging the quasars in the i-band and running photometric analysis on our fields, candidates can be identified or rejected by whether or not they appear in our fields. We also provide an analysis of the colors of our candidate high-redshift quasars.This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under REU grant AST1560461
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #229
- Pub Date:
- January 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AAS...22925007H