The VST ATLAS Quasar Survey I: Catalogue
Alice Eltvedt, T. Shanks, N. Metcalfe, B. Ansarinejad, L. F., Barrientos, R. Sharp, U. Malik, D. N. A. Murphy, M. Irwin, M. Wilson, D. M., Alexander, A. Kovacs, J. Garcia-Bellido, S. Ahlen, D. Brooks, A. de la, Macorra, A. Font-Ribera, S. Gontcho a Gontcho, K. Honscheid

TL;DR
The VST ATLAS Quasar Survey catalogues approximately 1.2 million quasar candidates over 4700 square degrees, utilizing multi-wavelength data to optimize selection and estimate the sky density of quasars at different redshifts.
Contribution
This paper presents a new extensive quasar candidate catalogue based on VST ATLAS and NEOWISE data, with improved selection criteria and photometric redshift estimates for large-scale cosmological surveys.
Findings
Catalogued ~1.2 million quasar candidates over 4700 deg².
Achieved a sky density of ~130 deg⁻² for z<2.2 quasars.
Demonstrated the effectiveness of multi-wavelength selection methods.
Abstract
We present the VST ATLAS Quasar Survey, consisting of quasar (QSO) candidates with over deg. The catalogue is based on VST ATLASNEOWISE imaging surveys and aims to reach a QSO sky density of deg for and deg for . One of the aims of this catalogue is to select QSO targets for the 4MOST Cosmology Redshift Survey. To guide our selection, we use X-ray/UV/optical/MIR data in the extended William Herschel Deep Field (WHDF) where we find a broad-line QSO density of deg, roughly consistent with the expected deg. We also find that % of our QSOs are morphologically classed as optically extended. Overall, we find that in these deep data, MIR, UV and X-ray selections are all % complete while X-ray suffers less contamination than MIR and UV. MIR is…
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Taxonomy
TopicsGalaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena · Astronomy and Astrophysical Research · Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology
