Issue |
A&A
Volume 584, December 2015
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A100 | |
Number of page(s) | 8 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201526570 | |
Published online | 27 November 2015 |
Extinction curve template for intrinsically reddened quasars ⋆
1
European Southern Observatory,
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2,
85748
Garching,
Germany
e-mail:
tzafar@eso.org
2
Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Institute, University of
Copenhagen, Juliane Maries Vej
30, 2100
Copenhagen,
Denmark
3
Department of Space Science, University of the
Punjab, Quaid-i-Azam
Campus, 54590
Lahore,
Pakistan
4
Dipartimento di Fisica
Universitá di Roma La Sapienza, Piazzale Aldo
Moro 5, 00185
Roma,
Italy
5
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, C/ Vía Lxctea,
s/n, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
6
Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La
Laguna, 38206, La
Laguna, Tenerife,
Spain
7
Gran Telescopio Canarias (GRANTECAN), 38205 San
Cristóbal
de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
8
Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy, Königstuhl 17, 69117
Heidelberg,
Germany
Received: 21 May 2015
Accepted: 8 October 2015
We analyzed the near-infrared to UV data of 16 quasars with redshifts ranging from 0.71 <z< 2.13 to investigate dust extinction properties. The sample presented in this work was obtained from the High AV Quasar (HAQ) survey. The quasar candidates were selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS), and follow-up spectroscopy was carried out at the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) and the New Technology Telescope (NTT). To study dust extinction curves intrinsic to the quasars, we selected 16 cases from the HAQ survey for which the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) law could not provide a good solution to the spectral energy distributions (SEDs). We derived the extinction curves using the Fitzpatrick & Massa (1986, ApJ, 307, 286, FM) law by comparing the observed SEDs to a combined previously published quasar template. The derived extinction, AV, ranges from 0.2–1.0 mag. All the individual extinction curves of our quasars are steeper (RV = 2.2–2.7) than that of the SMC, with a weighted mean value of RV = 2.4. We derived an average quasar extinction curve for our sample by simultaneously fitting SEDs by using the weighted mean values of the FM law parameters and a varying RV. The entire sample is well fit with a single best-fit value of RV = 2.2 ± 0.2. The average quasar extinction curve deviates from the steepest Milky Way and SMC extinction curves at a confidence level ≳95%. Such steep extinction curves suggest that a significant population of silicates is involved in producing small dust grains. Another possibility might be that the large dust grains may have been destroyed by the activity of the nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN), resulting in steep extinction curves.
Key words: galaxies: high-redshift / quasars: general / dust, extinction
Appendix A is available in electronic form at http://www.aanda.org
© ESO, 2015
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