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J.K. Kuraszkiewicz, P.J. Green (Harvard Smithsonian CfA), K. Forster (Caltech), T.L. Aldcroft (Harvard Smithsonian CfA), A. Koratkar (STScI), I.N. Evans (Harvard Smithsonian CfA)
We present the measurements of the UV/optical emission lines in a heterogeneous sample of 170 AGN observed by FOS on HST, prior to the installation of COSTAR. We use an automated technique to measure the line strengths and widths, accounting for galactic reddening, contamination from blended iron, and absorption lines both galactic and intrinsic. Using modeling software (Sherpa) developed for the Chandra mission, we perform multicomponent fits to the emission line profiles and here show the distribution of measured line parameters (equivalent width and FWHM) for a variety of lines, including upper limits. The current pre-COSTAR sample is also being extended to a larger post-COSTAR spectroscopic database using identical techniques.
Ours ongoing project is aimed at measuring emission lines of large quasar samples, in a consistent and largely automated manner. By including the FOS AGN together with a previous sample analyzed by the same techniques (993 LBQS quasars from Forster et al. 2001; Green et al. 2001), we greatly extend the luminosity and redshift range to better study relations between AGN emission line and continuum properties, and their evolution in cosmic time.
The authors gratefully acknowledge support provided by NASA through grant NAG5-6410 (LTSA).