Associated Absorbers and Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

We present the results of 44 low redshift quasars (0.06 < z < 0.85) observed with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope that lie within the footprint of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We use photometric data of galaxies from the SDSS DR12 to match galaxies with absorption systems of a similar redshift. Within this data set of quasars, we focused upon associated absorbers. An associated absorber is loosely defined as an absorption system with a velocity separation of less than 5,000 km/s of its background quasar. We will compare the COS sample of possible associated absorber-galaxy pairs to the known anticorrelation between absorber equivalent width and galaxy impact parameter. We will investigate trends with quasar luminosity in this sample and in a control sample of possible non-associated absorber-galaxy pairs in order to examine the galaxy proximity effect.