The SDSS Quasar Survey

AST-0307582施耐德斯隆数字天空调查(SDSS)类星体调查完成后，将覆盖四分之一的天球，将包含大约100,000个红移5.5以下的类星体，具有一致和准确的位置、光度、图像形态和光谱。这项研究将产生主要的类星体星表，一个宽吸收线(BAL)类星体星表，以及一份新的高红移类星体的年度清单，作为对其他研究人员的服务。面积覆盖、灵敏度、测光精度、宽波长覆盖和射电选择的组合使它成为一个独特的强大的类星体数据集，它的产生还有培训未来研究人员的额外好处。尽管这些星表可以而且将被用于许多研究，但这个项目将把科学努力集中在理解类星体光度函数及其演化上，并有望在未来许多年内产生明确的光度函数。这项研究还可能验证来自高质量SDSS数据的光度红移的有效性，使样本能够扩展到大约100万个类星体。这一提议所支持的质量控制使数据库比“原始”目录更有用，后者的有条件的质量标志可能很难理解。

AST-0307582SchneiderThe Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Quasar Survey, when completed, will cover a quarter of the celestial sphere and will contain approximately 100,000 quasars below redshift 5.5, with consistent and accurate positions, photometry, image morphology, and spectra. This research will produce the main quasar catalog, a broad absorption line (BAL) quasar catalog, and an annual list of new high-redshift quasars, as a service to other researchers. The combination of area coverage, sensitivity, photometric accuracy, broad wavelength coverage, and radio selection make this a uniquely powerful quasar dataset, and its production has the added benefit of training future researchers. Although the catalogs can, and will, be used for many studies, this project will focus its scientific efforts on understanding the quasar luminosity function and its evolution, and promises to produce the definitive luminosity function for many years to come. The research may also be able to verify the validity of photometric redshifts from the high quality SDSS data, enabling the sample to be extended to around a million quasars. The quality control supported by this proposal makes the database of far more use than the "raw" catalog, whose conditional quality flags can be hard to understand.***