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Million Quasars Catalog (MILLIQUAS), Version 8 (2 August 2023)

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

This table contains the Million Quasars (MILLIQUAS) Catalog, Version 8 (2 August 2023). It is a compendium of 907,144 type-I QSOs and AGN, largely complete from the literature to 30 June 2023. 66,026 QSO candidates are also included, calculated via radio/X-ray association (including double radio lobes) as being 99% likely to be quasars. Blazars and type-II objects are also included, bringing the total count to 1,021,800. 60.7% of all objects show Gaia-EDR3 astrometry. Low-confidence/quality or questionable objects (so deemed by their researchers) are not included in Milliquas. Additional quality cuts can be applied as detailed in the HMQ paper (Flesch 2015,PASA,32,10). Full QSO/AGN classification is accomplished via spectral lines, yielding a reliable spectroscopic redshift. Two spectral lines are required, or one spectral line refining a compatible photometric redshift. Obscured AGN with redshifts from the hosts only are taken to be type-II objects. Some legacy quasars with neither good spectra nor radio/X-ray association were flagged by Gaia-EDR3 as 5-sigma moving (i.e., stars), and so were removed from Milliquas. All objects are de-duplicated across source catalogs. The author's aim here is to present one unique reliable object per each data row. Two NIQs offset < 2 arcsec can be reported as a single object if within the same host. Lenses are reported as single objects onto the brightest quasar imaged. (Milliquas is not a catalog of lenses.) The contents are relatively simple; each object is shown as one entry with the sky coordinates (of whatever epoch), its original name, object class, red and blue optical magnitudes, PSF class, redshift, the citations for the name and redshift, and up to four radio/X-ray identifiers where applicable. Questions/comments/praise/complaints may be directed to Eric Flesch at eric@flesch.org. If you use this catalog in published research, the author requests that you please cite it. The confirmed quasars of this catalog (to Jan 2015) were published as the Half Million Quasars (HMQ) catalog: Flesch E., 2015,PASA,32,10. Note however that Milliquas uses optical sky data from ASP (2017,PASA,34,25) whereas the HMQ used optical sky data from QORG (2004,A&A,427,387) Appendix A. This table was updated by the HEASARC in July 2023 based on a machine-readable catalog obtained from the author's MILLIQUAS website at <a href="https://quasars.org/milliquas.htm">https://quasars.org/milliquas.htm</a>;. <p> This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. <p> This research has made use of the SIMBAD database and CDS cross-match service (to obtain Gaia-EDR3 and Pan-STARRS photometry) provided by CDS, Strasbourg, France. <a href="https://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad">https://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad</a>; This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/milliquas
Data Last Modified 2025-09-10
Category Astrophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 506924f5-de61-4677-8be7-2d0236eaf441
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/milliquas.html
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash a7b3ea0f78ed2f6f58ab57f6862ca66be5fc9ea7ab75742ac8482d92485d723b
Source Schema Version 1.1

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