2003/12/19 by M. Fukugita, Masataka Fukugita, Osamu Nakamura +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/383222
published as Astrophys.J. 603 (2004) L65-L68 · Submitted to Astrophys. J. Letters
arxiv created 2003/12/19 · openalex publication_date 2004/02/18 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
We present an investigation of the environment (≈600 kpc radius) of a pair of luminous z = 4.25 quasars, SDSS J1439-0034A and B, separated by 33''. An analysis of high-quality Subaru spectra of the quasars suggests that this configuration is indeed a physical pair and not a gravitational lens; the redshifts are slightly different (although marginally consistent with being the same), and the two spectra have strikingly different features. We search for bright galaxies ( L ≳ 0.4 L *) having similar redshifts using the V dropout technique and semi-narrowband imaging looking for strong Lyα emission. We find no enhancement in the galaxy density around the quasar pair; its environment differs very little from a general field, with the upper limit of the density enhancement being about 3.5 at a 90% confidence. We infer that bright quasars happened to appear in two normal galaxies in a general field.