Online Archive of University of Virginia Scholarship
SED Fitting of WISE-Selected Luminous, Obscured Quasars at Redshift ~ 2920 views
Author
Edwards, Patrick, Astronomy, University of Virginia
Advisors
Whittle, D. Mark, Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia
Abstract
This project was designed to characterize the nature of a sample of high-redshift galaxies selected from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer catalog (WISE), believed to be hosts to active galactic nuclei (AGN). We believe that these objects are highly dust obscured AGN in the center of their host galaxies, at a very interesting and not well understood point in galaxy evolution. After determining the magnitudes of each object in eight different wavelength bands - ranging from the optical to the mid-infrared (MIR) - the absolute fluxes derived from these magnitudes were converted into spectral energy distribution plots (SEDs). A code was developed to fit each of these AGN SEDs to a custom SED template, which could be altered according to an selection of parameters. The templates were a combination of a type-I quasar and a host galaxy, set by the parameters of: the strength of the quasar relative to the galaxy, the amount of dust extinction of the quasar, the temperature of the dust, and the redshift of the galaxy. Through the adjustment of each of these parameters, as well as allowing for the varying of the type of host galaxy, most of the object SEDs were fit to a template within a reasonable degree of certainty. There were a few objects within our sample which were not well fit by the template, and may require a different kind of template. Throughout this work I will use the naming convention "W\#\#\#\#" to describe each of the objects, "W" signifying it is a WISE-selected object and then the first four numbers in its WISE designation.
Edwards, Patrick. SED Fitting of WISE-Selected Luminous, Obscured Quasars at Redshift ~ 2. University of Virginia, Astronomy, BS (Bachelor of Science), 2018-05-10, https://doi.org/10.18130/V3V97ZR3Q.
