1. Discovery of the Most Ultra-Luminous QSO Using GAIA, SkyMapper, and WISE
- Author
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John L. Tonry, Christopher A. Onken, Patrick Tisserand, Fuyan Bian, Wei Jeat Hon, Christian Wolf, Noura Alonzi, Brian P. Schmidt, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (IAP), and Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
- Subjects
Physics ,Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) ,010308 nuclear & particles physics ,media_common.quotation_subject ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Astronomy ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies ,01 natural sciences ,Redshift ,Spectral line ,Photometry (optics) ,13. Climate action ,Space and Planetary Science ,Sky ,Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) ,0103 physical sciences ,[PHYS.ASTR]Physics [physics]/Astrophysics [astro-ph] ,010303 astronomy & astrophysics ,Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics ,media_common - Abstract
We report the discovery of the ultra-luminous QSO SMSS~J215728.21-360215.1 with magnitude $z=16.9$ and W4$=7.42$ at redshift 4.75. Given absolute magnitudes of $M_{145,\rm AB}=-29.3$, $M_{300,\rm AB}=-30.12$ and $\log L_{\rm bol}/L_{\rm bol,\odot} = 14.84$, it is the QSO with the highest unlensed UV-optical luminosity currently known in the Universe. It was found by combining proper-motion data from Gaia DR2 with photometry from SkyMapper DR1 and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). In the Gaia database it is an isolated single source and thus unlikely to be strongly gravitationally lensed. It is also unlikely to be a beamed source as it is not discovered in the radio domain by either NVSS or SUMSS. It is classed as a weak-emission-line QSO and possesses broad absorption line features. A lightcurve from ATLAS spanning the time from October 2015 to December 2017 shows little sign of variability., 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in PASA
- Published
- 2018
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