Sloan Digital Sky Survey NBC Quasar Candidate Catalog

The Nonparametric Bayes Classifier (NBC) Quasar Candidate Catalog is a catalog of 100,563 unresolved, UV-excess (UVX) quasar candidates with magnitudes to as faint as 21 in the g-band from 2099 square degrees of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release One (DR1) imaging data. Existing spectra of 22,737 sources reveals that 22,191 (97.6%) are quasars; accounting for the magnitude dependence of this efficiency, the authors estimate that 95,502 (95.0%) of the objects in the catalog are quasars. Such a high efficiency is unprecedented in broadband surveys of quasars. This "proof-of-concept" sample is designed to be maximally efficient, but still has 94.7% completeness to unresolved, g ~< 19.5, UVX quasars from the DR1 quasar catalog. This efficient and complete selection is the result of the application of a probability density type analysis to training sets that describe the four-dimensional color distribution of stars and spectroscopically confirmed quasars in the SDSS. Specifically, the authors use a nonparametric Bayesian classification, based on kernel density estimation, to parametrize the color distribution of astronomical sources - allowing for fast and robust classification. They further supplement the catalog by providing photometric redshifts and matches to FIRST/VLA, ROSAT, and USNO-B sources. Much more information on the SDSS is available at the project's web site at <a href="http://www.sdss.org/">http://www.sdss.org/</a>. This database table was created by the HEASARC in August 2005 based on CDS table J/ApJS/155/257/table1.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .