PI: Tomotsugu Goto, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, firstname.lastname@example.org
Address: Dept. of IR Astrophysics, ISAS, 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 2298510, Japan
Title: J-band imaging of the highest redshift QSO candidates
Abstract: Using the KPNO2.1m/Flamingos IR imager, we propose J-band imaging of 50 highest redshift (z>6.43) QSO candidates carefully selected from the large data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) as a z-band only detection. The proposed J-band imaging enables us to remove the largest contaminants in previous surveys - cosmic rays and late-type stars. The survey efficiency is expected to increase three times higher with the proposed J-band imaging, saving significant amount of 8m- class telescope time to spectroscopically follow-up. The resulting ~ 15 candidates with blue z-J color will be spectroscopically followed-up with an 8m-class telescope to find the highest redshift QSOs at >6.43. Note that we specifically target fainter objects than the previous survey by Fan et al. in order to find even higher redshift QSOs at z>6.43 (thus no overlap with Fan et al.).
National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 950 North Cherry Avenue, P.O. Box 26732, Tucson, Arizona 85726, Phone: (520) 318-8000, Fax: (520) 318-8360