AAS 196th Meeting, June 2000
Session 53. Surveys, Catalogs, Database
Display, Thursday, June 8, 2000, 9:20am-4:00pm, Empire Hall South

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[53.04] Photometric Redshifts of QSOs

G. T. Richards (Chicago), X. Fan (Princeton), D. P. Schneider (Penn State), M. A. Strauss (Princeton), D. E. Vanden Berk (Fermilab), SDSS Collaboration

We show that the design of the SDSS filter system and the quality of the SDSS imaging data is sufficient for determining photometric redshifts of QSOs. Photo-z determination is even possible for z\le2.2 despite the lack of a strong continuum break that the galaxy and high-z QSO photo-z technique normally requires. Preliminary analysis shows that up to 70% of the estimated redshifts will be correct to within \Delta z = 0.2. Further refinement of the procedure may allow for better accuracy. The accuracy of the photometric redshift technique does not appear to be dependent upon redshift or magnitude. As such, calibration of the color-redshift relation to g'~1 will allow for the discovery of on the order of 106 QSOs in addition to the 105 QSOs that the SDSS will confirm spectroscopically. We discuss the potential scientific uses of such a sample.


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