2dF QSO Redshift Appeal
Every Spectrum Helps: Please give generously
Final Current number of redshifts:
(19/06/2002)
02/07/02
On-line postage stamp images of all sources have been changed to be the
SuperCOSMOS Sky Surveys (see also
SuperCOSMOS Science Archive) blue plates rather
than from the STScI/DSS blue plate scans. Both FITS and jpeg versions are available.
Note that the old DSS images (as can still be found on the CD-ROM data release 1) were gif format. The
SuperCOSMOS scans are slightly higher resolution, so the new images are rather larger
even though they still cover a 2 arcmin box.
Images may be extracted via the
spectroscopic database search page.
25/06/02
New feature on the
spectroscopic database search page.
You can now search for objects by name. Objects will be extracted for which the entered
text is a substring of the published 2QZ object name (e.g., J012330.6-294840).
19/06/02
The completion of the 2QZ and 2dFGRS has been marked by the production of some
rather nice plaques for the two teams. Pictures can be seen in an
AAO press release.
13/04/02
On 11 April 2002 the final observations for the 2QZ were taken at the AAT.
There is of course still a huge amount of work to be done before the public data
release, but this puts us one big step closer to that goal.
Many thanks go to all the AAO staff and collaborators who have helped us get
this far. We are currently working on the final data release which will be
made publicly available as soon as it is ready. We are currently aiming for
first quarter 2003. Further announcements to follow.
16/04/01
The data CDROMs are now available. Please see you nearest 2QZ representative!
The MNRAS paper describing the data release will be published this week.
29/03/01
Public Data Release: The paper describing the first public data release
from the survey has now been
accepted by Monthly Notices and will appear in vol 322, pink pages 29. CD-ROMs
(designed for Linux/UNIX machines) containing the spectra, a custom catalogue
search tool and various other survey information have been produced and will
be available from survey team members as soon as the paper is published.
20/06/00
Having broken the 10 000 QSO barrier, the survey progress was recently
reviewed by both ATAC and PATT and it was agreed that pending a timely data
release, the allocation committees would continue to support the 2dF redshift
surveys. We are now hoping to have the surveys complete inside two
years, with a public data release in the first half of 2001. Details are
still to be confirmed. For the time being, the number of QSOs is creeping up
slowly and we are continuing to get shocking weather for our observing runs.
28/10/99
I have been receiving complaints about the lack of new news, but there has
not really been much to add, other than to say we are going well.
Observations are continuing and the weather has been kinder,
if not wonderful. 2dF itself has been behaving well. There have been problems
with halation on the dewar window and a bad contact sporadically leading to the loss
of CCD2, but these are fixed or at least `under cotrol'. Recently there have been
some exciting develpments. The science
grade CCD has finally been installed in spectrograph 2 and new ADC control software also
seems to have greatly improved its performance. These two enhancements appear to have
improved our spectroscopic completeness to over 90%, but time will tell if this
is maintained.
The recent
Coral Sea Cosmology meeting
was attended by representatives of several large
redshift surveys and I believe the 2dF QSO Survey presented some very good papers.
In particular it was most satisfying to be presenting real, new, solid results; fruits
of the survey as it were, rather than just our plans. In particular see the presentations by
Scott on clustering
and by
Brian on the luminosity function.
04/02/99
The weather has improved recently and though it is still not quite up to what
we might hope for, progress is being made again. In the most recent observing
run, we collected a further 607 QSOs.
The other success story is that the
automated pipeline software
has been upgraded and is working well. We are in the process of re-reducing all the
observations to date and are hoping that the new optimal extraction routines will
improve our ID completeness rates, so you should see the counter above tick up a
few more objects over the next month.
15/07/98
We have had such awful weather recently that there has been very little
progress. It even snowed up at Coonabarabran during our last observing run.
The progress indicator has crept up a little, to 1313 and this does not
include the bright QSOs identified with FLAIR; currently 117.
26/02/98
We have broken the 1000 mark, with the total now standing at 1169 confirmed
QSOs. They are not all from 2dF. There are 46 discovered with the FLAIR
system on the UK Schmidt Telescope and 30 from observations with DBS
on the ANU 2·3m Telescope. They were all selected from the same
2dF QSO Redshift Survey input catalogue and further details of the
separate observations will appear on these pages in time.
The most recent 2dF observing run yet again produced the best data
to date, but we shall leave it to the 2dF team to summarise
current status
and outstanding problems.
19/11/97
With the recent availability of the full 400 fibre system on 2dF, we
are suddenly making amazing progress. During the
October 1997
run the 2dF team were able to observe and re-configure simultaneously
and despite the poor weather, just over 1000 QSO candidates
were observed. (Thanks to them again for all their effort on our behalf)
We are still in the process of measuring all the redshifts,
but the progress bar above is really starting to grow.
Example Spectra and Preliminary Results
This section has been superceded. See our new
results page.
From our first observing run.
Data from another early commissioning run.
Postscript plot
of some QSOs and
galaxies
taken from an
AAO Newsletter
article.
Still more exmaples. These 10 spectra were selected to be of better than average
quality and are drawn from across the full redshft range of the survey. They
are therefore better regarded as `example QSOs' than as samples of the 2QZ.
Postscript figures or
On-screen GIF plots.
Our observed
magnitude,
redshift and
spatial distributions.
We do not only find QSOs. This plot shows UBR catalogue
contamination as a function of colour.
16/04/01
Spectroscopic Data Release 1
31/03/01
A few cosmetic updates and changes. The new URL should now be working
and all future access to the web page be via
http://www.2dfquasar.org.
27/06/00
A few cosmetic updates and changes. I have added a
results page. I would consider this much more
a `work in progress' page than just links to published papers. At the moment
there is little there, but I would gratefully accept submissions from team
members of things to include. These can either just be interesting plots about
which I can write a brief public explanation, or
write up a whole page I can simply link to.
04/06/00
Survey team members can now get the FITS and gif postage stamp images of all 2QZ
sources from the database extraction web form.
30/05/00
Some more example spectra have been included.
Full QSO+galaxy files can now be extracted from the database by team members. See the
archive page.
20/05/00
Extracting data from the archive just got easier again. Instructions are
here.
Remember, this is for survey member only. You can expect an announcement about
schedule for public data release `soon'.
28/10/99
More information
on how survey members can extract the data they need from the archive.
24/07/99
Putting together the
HTML proceedings for the Coral Sea Conference
has given me the excuse to put up a few more pretty colour plots. There
are updated
N(m) and N(z) histograms,
and a new
wedge plot
showing the QSOs and the 2dF galaxies. There is also a map of
survey sky coverage
and a figure illustrating the UBR catalogue
contamination as a function of colour.
More importantly, I have made some changes to the
data archive (survey team members only),
most particularly describing
how to extract spectra from the database.
09/02/99
Updated redshift wedge.
15/07/98
Since you are reading this, you no doubt know that the web page has moved
to a new home:
http://msowww.anu.edu.au/~rsmith/QSO_Survey/qso_surv.html.
I have also updated the
N(z) plot
26/02/98
Greater than 1000 QSOs!
31/12/97
Updated redshift wedge.
05/12/97
We've added a page for the
redshift wedge plot Scott has produced.
17/10/97
A new update on the survey QSOs'
N(m) and N(z) relations.
10/10/97
Impressive progress has been made on the 2dF instrument itself.
See the 2dF page
and in particular a report on the first observing run with the
full complement of
400 fibres
and both spectrographs observing simultaneously.
Updated contact addresses page.
3/2/97
The CCD photometry used for callibration of the UVX catalogue is now
publicly available.
31/1/97
We have added a few more example spectra from
more recent observing runs.
20/11/96
We have our very first spectra!
