Bulletin de la Société Royale des Sciences de Liège Bulletin de la Société Royale des Sciences de Liège -  Volume 87 - Année 2018  Actes de colloques  First Belgo-Indian Network for Astronomy & Astrophysics (BINA) workshop - November 2016 - Nainital, India 

Probing the central engine and environment of AGN using ARIES 1.3-m and 3.6-m telescopes

Hum Chand
Aryabhatta Research Institute of observational sciencES (ARIES ), Nainital 263002, India, hum@aries.res.in
Suvendu Rakshit
Indian Institute of Astrophysics II Block, Koramangala, Bangalore 560 034, India
Priyanka Jalan
Aryabhatta Research Institute of observational sciencES (ARIES ), Nainital 263002, India
Vineet Ojha
Aryabhatta Research Institute of observational sciencES (ARIES ), Nainital 263002, India
Raghunathan Srianand
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Post Bag 4, Pune 411007, India
Mariappan Vivek
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, 115 S. 1400 E., UT 84112, US
Sapna Mishra
Aryabhatta Research Institute of observational sciencES (ARIES ), Nainital 263002, India
Amitesh Omar
Aryabhatta Research Institute of observational sciencES (ARIES ), Nainital 263002, India
Parveen Kumar
Aryabhatta Research Institute of observational sciencES (ARIES ), Nainital 263002, India
Ravi Joshi
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Post Bag 4, Pune 411007, India
 Gopal-Krishna
Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences, University of Mumbai campus (Kalina) 400098, India
Rathna Kumar
Aryabhatta Research Institute of observational sciencES (ARIES ), Nainital 263002, India

Abstract

We discuss three long term observational programmes to probe the central engine and environment of active galactic nuclei (AGN) using the recently installed ARIES 1.3-m and 3.6-m telescopes. The first programme is on the photometric reverberation mapping of low luminosity AGN by mainly using the ARIES 1.3-m telescope. The major impact of this programme other than to estimate the black hole mass will be to extend the broad line region (BLR) radius-luminosity (RBLR-LAGN) relation to the unexplored low luminosity regime, and to constrain the AGN broad line region geometry. The second programme is to use long slit spectroscopy on the ARIES 3.6-m telescope to discover new high redshift quasar pairs with angular separation less than ~ 1-arcmin. Here, the background QSOs sight-line will be used to probe the environment of the foreground QSOs at kpc-Mpc scales. The major impact of this programme will be on the discovery of new pairs which have been missed in the SDSS survey due to fiber collision below 1-arcmin separation, and use them to understand about any excess overdensity around the QSO, any anisotropic emission of QSOs, and/or any episodic activity of QSOs. The third programme is related to spectral variability studies of the C IV broad absorption line (BAL) QSOs, based on low resolution spectroscopy using the ARIES 3.6-m telescope. Here, those most interesting cases will be monitored, where the BAL flow emerges afresh or disappears completely in the C IV trough of BAL QSOs sample as seen in SDSS multi-epoch observations. Continuous monitoring of such a sample will be important for our understanding of the nature and origin of the flow, along with their stability and dynamical evolution.

Keywords : AGN, astronomy, astrophysics, extragalactic, photometry, spectroscopy

Pour citer cet article

Hum Chand, Suvendu Rakshit, Priyanka Jalan, Vineet Ojha, Raghunathan Srianand, Mariappan Vivek, Sapna Mishra, Amitesh Omar, Parveen Kumar, Ravi Joshi, Gopal-Krishna & Rathna Kumar, «Probing the central engine and environment of AGN using ARIES 1.3-m and 3.6-m telescopes», Bulletin de la Société Royale des Sciences de Liège [En ligne], Volume 87 - Année 2018, Actes de colloques, First Belgo-Indian Network for Astronomy & Astrophysics (BINA) workshop - November 2016 - Nainital, India, 291 - 298 URL : http://popups.ulg.be/0037-9565/index.php?id=7727.