Eric Morganson

Discovery of eight z~ 6 quasars from Pan-STARRS1

High-redshift quasars are currently the only probes of the growth of supermassive black holes and potential tracers of structure evolution at early cosmic time. Here we present our candidate selection criteria from the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System 1 and follow-up strategy to discover quasars in the redshift range 5.7 lsim z lsim 6.2. With this strategy we discovered eight new 5.7 ≤ z ≤ 6.0 quasars, increasing the number of known quasars at z > 5.7 by more than 10%. We additionally recovered 18 previously known quasars. The eight quasars presented here span a large range of luminosities (–27.3 ≤ M 1450 ≤ –25.4; 19.6 ≤ z P1 ≤ 21.2) and are remarkably heterogeneous in their spectral features: half of them show bright emission lines whereas the other half show a weak or no Lyα emission line (25% with rest-frame equivalent width of the Lyα +N V line lower than 15 A). We find a larger fraction of weak-line emission quasars than in lower redshift studies. This may imply that the weak-line quasar population at the highest redshifts could be more abundant than previously thought. However, larger samples of quasars are needed to increase the statistical significance of this finding.

The Pan-STARRS1 distant z > 5.6 quasar survey: more than 100 quasars within the first gyr of the universe

Luminous quasars at z > 5.6 can be studied in detail with the current generation of telescopes and provide us with unique information on the first gigayear of the universe. Thus far, these studies have been statistically limited by the number of quasars known at these redshifts. Such quasars are rare, and therefore, wide-field surveys are required to identify them, and multiwavelength data are required to separate them efficiently from their main contaminants, the far more numerous cool dwarfs. In this paper, we update and extend the selection for the z ~ 6 quasars presented in Banados et al. (2014) using the Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) survey. We present the PS1 distant quasar sample, which currently consists of 124 quasars in the redshift range 5.6 ≾ z ≾ 6.7 that satisfy our selection criteria. Of these quasars, 77 have been discovered with PS1, and 63 of them are newly identified in this paper. We present the composite spectra of the PS1 distant quasar sample. This sample spans a factor of ~20 in luminosity and shows a variety of emission line properties. The number of quasars at z > 5.6 presented in this work almost doubles the previously known quasars at these redshifts, marking a transition phase from studies of individual sources to statistical studies of the high-redshift quasar population, which was impossible with earlier, smaller samples.

The Complex Structure of Stars in the Outer Galactic Disk as revealed by Pan-STARRS1

We present a panoptic view of the stellar structure in the Galactic disks outer reaches commonly known as the Monoceros Ring, based on data from Pan-STARRS1. These observations clearly show the large extent of the stellar overdensities on both sides of the Galactic disk, extending between b = –25° and b = +35° and covering over 130° in Galactic longitude. The structure exhibits a complex morphology with both stream-like features and a sharp edge to the structure in both the north and the south. We compare this map to mock observations of two published simulations aimed at explaining such structures in the outer stellar disk, one postulating an origin as a tidal stream and the other demonstrating a scenario where the disk is strongly distorted by the accretion of a satellite. These morphological comparisons of simulations can link formation scenarios to observed structures, such as demonstrating that the distorted-disk model can produce thin density features resembling tidal streams. Although neither model produces perfect agreement with the observations—the tidal stream predicts material at larger distances that is not detected while in the distorted disk model, the midplane is warped to an excessive degree—future tuning of the models to accommodate these latest data may yield better agreement.

A Pan-STARRS1 VIEW OF THE BIFURCATED SAGITTARIUS STREAM

We use data from the Pan-STARRS1 survey to present a panoramic view of the Sagittarius tidal stream in the southern Galactic hemisphere. As a result of the extensive sky coverage of Pan-STARRS1, the southern stream is visible along more than 60° of its orbit, nearly double the length seen by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The recently discovered southern bifurcation of the stream is also apparent, with the fainter branch of the stream visible over at least 30°. Using a combination of fitting both the main-sequence turnoff and the red clump, we measure the distance to both arms of the stream in the south. We find that the distances to the bright arm of the stream agree very well with the N-body models of Law & Majewski. We also find that the faint arm lies ~5 kpc closer to the Sun than the bright arm, similar to the behavior seen in the northern hemisphere.

The time domain spectroscopic survey: variable selection and anticipated results

We present the selection algorithm and anticipated results for the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS). TDSS is an Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)-IV Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) subproject that will provide initial identification spectra of approximately 220,000 luminosity-variable objects (variable stars and active galactic nuclei across 7500 deg2 selected from a combination of SDSS and multi-epoch Pan-STARRS1 photometry. TDSS will be the largest spectroscopic survey to explicitly target variable objects, avoiding pre-selection on the basis of colors or detailed modeling of specific variability characteristics. Kernel Density Estimate analysis of our target population performed on SDSS Stripe 82 data suggests our target sample will be 95% pure (meaning 95% of objects we select have genuine luminosity variability of a few magnitudes or more). Our final spectroscopic sample will contain roughly 135,000 quasars and 85,000 stellar variables, approximately 4000 of which will be RR Lyrae stars which may be used as outer Milky Way probes. The variability-selected quasar population has a smoother redshift distribution than a color-selected sample, and variability measurements similar to those we develop here may be used to make more uniform quasar samples in large surveys. The stellar variable targets are distributed fairly uniformly across color space, indicating that TDSS will obtain spectra for a wide variety of stellar variables including pulsating variables, stars with significant chromospheric activity, cataclysmic variables, and eclipsing binaries. TDSS will serve as a pathfinder mission to identify and characterize the multitude of variable objects that will be detected photometrically in even larger variability surveys such as Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

Constraining the radio-loud fraction of quasars at z > 5.5

Radio-loud Active Galactic Nuclei at z~2-4 are typically located in dense environments and their host galaxies are among the most massive systems at those redshifts, providing key insights for galaxy evolution. Finding radio-loud quasars at the highest accessible redshifts (z~6) is important to study their properties and environments at even earlier cosmic time. They would also serve as background sources for radio surveys intended to study the intergalactic medium beyond the epoch of reionization in HI 21 cm absorption. Currently, only five radio-loud (

MAPPING THE MONOCEROS RING IN 3D WITH PAN-STARRS1

R=f_{\nu,5{\rm GHz}}/f_{\nu,4400\AA}>10

Detection of Time Lags Between Quasar Continuum Emission Bands based on Pan-STARRS Light-curves

) quasars are known at z~6. In this paper we search for 5.5 5.5 quasars to robustly classify them as radio-quiet or radio-loud. Based on this, we reclassify the quasar J0203+0012 (z=5.72), previously considered radio-loud, to be radio-quiet. Using the available data in the literature, we constrain the radio-loud fraction of quasars at z~6, using the Kaplan--Meier estimator, to be

THE TIME-DOMAIN SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY: UNDERSTANDING THE OPTICALLY VARIABLE SKY WITH SEQUELS IN SDSS-III

8.1^{+5.0}_{-3.2}\%

The Dark Energy Survey Image Processing Pipeline

. This result is consistent with there being no evolution of the radio-loud fraction with redshift, in contrast to what has been suggested by some studies at lower redshifts.