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Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasars Detected by Chandra

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

The authors have studied the spectral energy distributions and evolution of a large sample of optically selected quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) that were observed in 323 Chandra images analyzed by the Chandra Multiwavelength Project (ChaMP). Their highest-confidence matched sample (which this HEASARC table comprises) includes 1135 X-ray detected quasars in the redshift range 0.2 < z < 5.4, representing some 36 Msec of effective exposure. In their paper, the authors provide catalogs of QSO properties, and describe their novel method of calculating X-ray flux upper limits and effective sky coverage. Spectroscopic redshifts are available for about 1/3 of the detected sample; elsewhere, redshifts are estimated photometrically. The authors have detected 56 QSOs with redshift z > 3, substantially expanding the known sample. They find no evidence for evolution out to z ~ 5 for either the X-ray photon index Gamma or for the ratio of optical/UV to X-ray flux Alpha_ox. About 10% of detected QSOs show best-fit intrinsic absorbing columns greater than 10<sup>22</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup>, but the fraction might reach ~1/3 if most nondetections are absorbed. The authors confirm a significant correlation between Alpha_ox and optical luminosity, but it flattens or disappears for fainter (M_B >~ -23) active galactic nucleus (AGN) alone. They report significant hardening of Gamma both toward higher X-ray luminosity, and for relatively X-ray loud quasars. These trends may represent a relative increase in nonthermal X-ray emission, and their findings thereby strengthen analogies between Galactic black hole binaries and AGN. For uniformly selected subsamples of narrow-line Seyfert 1s and narrow absorption line QSOs, they find no evidence for unusual distributions of either Alpha_ox or Gamma. Much more information on the SDSS is available at the project's web site at <a href="http://www.sdss.org/">http://www.sdss.org/</a>;. This table was created by the HEASARC in April 2009 based on the machine-readable version of Table 2 ('Properties of SDSS Quasars Detected by Chandra') which was obtained from the ApJ website. 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.

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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/sdsscxoqso
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 75996adc-752c-44c1-8018-2a07b0de11c4
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/sdsscxoqso.html
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 308265110f0f8c9fc5818c2b24258875c6e0910fc46fe7edf464cf214d8127db
Source Schema Version 1.1

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