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Sloan Digital Sky Survey Unusual Quasars Catalog

Metadata Updated: April 10, 2026

Large spectroscopic surveys have discovered very peculiar and hitherto unknown types of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Such rare objects may hold clues to the accretion history of the supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies. The authors aim to create a sizeable sample of unusual quasars from the unprecedented spectroscopic database of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). This table contains a catalog of 1005 quasars with unusual spectra in the redshift interval from 0.6 to 4.3. [HEASARC Note: the redshifts in this table actually range from 0.497 to 4.771]. The quasars were selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (Abazajian et al., 2009, ApJS, 182, 543) by means of Kohonen self-organising maps. The spectra are dominated by either broad absorption lines (42%), unusual red continua (27%), weak emission lines (18%), or conspicuously strong optical and/or UV iron emission (11%). This large sample provides a useful resource for both studying properties and relations of/between different types of unusual quasars and selecting particularly interesting objects, even though the compilation is not aimed at completeness in a quantifiable sense. The spectra are grouped into seven types. The catalogue contains the redshift, the absolute magnitude, the spectral type, the radio loudness parameter, a peculiarity index, and some comments on peculiar spectral features. This table was created by the HEASARC in May 2012 based on CDS table J/A+A/541/A77 file table3.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: See this page for license information.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 10, 2026

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 10, 2026
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/sdssunuqsr
Data Last Modified 2026-04-06
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 d5ca7050-8ec7-4c68-a61a-0429a238c47f
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL ivo://nasa.heasarc/sdssunuqsr
License https://www.usa.gov/government-works
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 8cba872511a1ed1dbf7b1f0f1c060dce22a5db1f647cce8dc16d64fc6a8f306f
Source Schema Version 1.1

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