AGN @ Wyoming

Placing High-Redshift Quasars in Perspective: A Gemini Near-Infrared Spectroscopic Survey (GNIRS-DQS)

This is the website containing data for the Gemini Near Infrared Spectrograph - Distant Quasar Survey (GNIRS-DQS). Link to paper on astro-ph
Original proposal image

Below see a brief description for each of the corresponding files associated with the survey:

1.) ASCIIs: Each quasar has a corresponding ASCII file containing select data about certain features of the quasar. These ASCII files are broken up into columns, and, depending on the presence of certain emission lines, will have information broken down into the following:
Column 1: SDSS designation
Column 2: Systemic redshift as measured by the best available spectral indicator
Now depending on the existence of certain lines, which is a product of a variety of factors which include things like redshift and noise, the subsequent columns will be organized into bunches that represent information about one emission line:
1-3 The line center, and corresponding upper and lower error bars
4-6 The FWHM, and corresponding upper and lower error bars
7-9 The EW, and corresponding upper and lower error bars
10 The asymmetry of the double Gaussian profile
11 The kurtosis of the double Gaussian profile
For which objects have which emission lines we recommend cross-referencing with the plots also provided on this website.
The final two columns of each ASCII file will always be the corresponding logFλ5100 and logL5100 of the quasar spectra.

2.) Data files: These are the machine readable tables associated with the published version of the paper in ApJS. A description of the tables and their respective formatting can be found in the paper itself.

3.) Plots: Each quasar has a corresponding plot associated with it, which shows the final, reduced, observed-frame NIR quasar spectrum along with any fits that were performed on the emission-line features.

Paper abstract:
We present spectroscopic measurements for 226 sources from the Gemini Near Infrared Spectrograph - Distant Quasar Survey (GNIRS-DQS). Being the largest uniform, homogeneous survey of its kind, it represents a flux-limited sample (≲19.0 mag, ≲16.5 mag) of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) quasars at 1.5 < z < 3.5 with a monochromatic luminosity (λLλ) at 5100Å in the range of 1044-1046 erg s-1. A combination of the GNIRS and SDSS spectra covers principal quasar diagnostic features, chiefly the C IV λ1549, Mg II λ2798, λ2803, Hβ λ4861, and [O III] λ4959, λ5007 emission lines, in each source. The spectral inventory will be utilized primarily to develop prescriptions for obtaining more accurate and precise redshifts, black hole masses, and accretion rates for all quasars. Additionally, the measurements will facilitate an understanding of the dependence of rest-frame ultraviolet-optical spectral properties of quasars on redshift, luminosity, and Eddington ratio, and test whether the physical properties of the quasar central engine evolve over cosmic time.


The files are:
ASCIIs.zip A zip file containing 226 ASCII for each individual object which hold the data of their reduced spectra, along with any fits performed for that object.
datafiles.zip A zip file containing 3 MRF tables which hold the data from the 3 tables in the GNIRS-DQS survey paper.
plots.zip A zip file containing 226 basic MATLAB plots representing the data.

Descriptions can be found in the paper. For questions, please contact Brandon Matthews (BrandonMatthews at my.unt.edu)



Back to UW AGN