Serendipitous discovery of a projected pair of QSOs separated by 4.5 arcsec on the sky [HEAP]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.01361


We present the serendipitous discovery of a projected pair of quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) with an angular separation of $\Delta\theta =4.50$ arcsec. The redshifts of the two QSOs are widely different: one, our programme target, is a QSO with a spectrum consistent with being a narrow line Seyfert 1 AGN at $z=2.05$. For this target we detect Lyman-$\alpha$, \ion{C}{4}, and \ion{C}{3]}. The other QSO, which by chance was included on the spectroscopic slit, is a Type 1 QSO at a redshift of $z=1.68$, for which we detect \ion{C}{4}, \ion{C}{3]} and \ion{Mg}{2}. We compare this system to previously detected projected QSO pairs and find that only five previously known pairs have smaller angular separation.

Read this paper on arXiv…

K. Heintz, J. Fynbo, J. Krogager, et. al.
Wed, 6 Apr 16
4/63

Comments: 16 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to Astronomical Journal