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We present a catalog of hard X-ray serendipitous sources detected in the first 80 months of observations by the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). The NuSTAR serendipitous survey 80 month (NSS80) catalog has an unprecedented ∼62 Ms of effective exposure time over 894 unique fields (a factor of 3 increase over the 40 month catalog, NSS40), with an areal coverage of ∼36 deg ^2 , larger than all NuSTAR extragalactic surveys. NSS80 provides 1274 hard X-ray sources in the 3−24 keV band (822 new detections compared to the previous NSS40). Approximately 76% of the NuSTAR sources have lower-energy (

Changing-look active galactic nuclei (CL AGNs) can be generally confirmed by the emergence (turn-on) or disappearance (turn-off) of broad emission lines (BELs), associated with a transient timescale (about 100 ∼ 5000 days) that is much shorter than predicted by traditional accretion disk models. We carry out a systematic CL AGN search by crossmatching the spectra coming from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Following previous studies, we identify CL AGNs based on H α , H β , and Mg ii at z ≤ 0.75 and Mg ii , C iii ], and C iv at z > 0.75. We present 56 CL AGNs based on visual inspection and three selection criteria, including 2 H α , 34 H β , 9 Mg ii , 18 C iii ], and 1 C iv CL AGN. Eight cases show simultaneous appearances/disappearances of two BELs. We also present 44 CL AGN candidates with significant flux variation of BELs, but remaining strong broad components. In the confirmed CL AGNs, 10 cases show additional CL candidate features for different lines. In this paper, we find: (1) a 24:32 ratio of turn-on to turn-off CL AGNs; (2) an upper-limit transition timescale ranging from 330 to 5762 days in the rest frame; and (3) the majority of CL AGNs follow the bluer-when-brighter trend. Our results greatly increase the current CL census (∼30%) and would be conducive to exploring the underlying physical mechanism.

We present findings of the detection of Magnesium II (Mg ii , λ = 2796, 2803 Å) absorbers from the early data release of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). DESI is projected to obtain spectroscopy of approximately 3 million quasars (QSOs), of which over 99% are anticipated to be at redshifts greater than z > 0.3, such that DESI would be able to observe an associated or intervening Mg ii absorber illuminated by the background QSO. We have developed an autonomous supplementary spectral pipeline that detects these systems through an initial line-fitting process and then confirms the line properties using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampler. Based upon a visual inspection of the resulting systems, we estimate that this sample has a purity greater than 99%. We have also investigated the completeness of our sample in regard to both the signal-to-noise properties of the input spectra and the rest-frame equivalent width ( W _0 ) of the absorber systems. From a parent catalog containing 83,207 quasars, we detect a total of 23,921 Mg ii absorption systems following a series of quality cuts. Extrapolating from this occurrence rate of 28.8% implies a catalog at the completion of the five-year DESI survey that will contain over eight hundred thousand Mg ii absorbers. The cataloging of these systems will enable significant further research because they carry information regarding circumgalactic medium environments, the distribution of intervening galaxies, and the growth of metallicity across the redshift range 0.3 ≤ z < 2.5.

A non-negligible fraction of quasars are red at optical wavelengths, indicating (in the majority of cases) that the accretion disc is obscured by a column of dust which extinguishes the shorter-wavelength blue emission. In this paper, we summarize recent work by our group, where we find fundamental differences in the radio properties of SDSS optically-selected red quasars. We also present new analyses, using a consistent color-selected quasar parent sample matched to four radio surveys (FIRST, VLA Stripe 82, VLA COSMOS 3 GHz, and LoTSS DR1) across a frequency range 144 MHz–3 GHz and four orders of magnitude in radio flux. We show that red quasars have enhanced small-scale radio emission (∼kpc) that peaks around the radio-quiet threshold (defined as the ratio of 1.4 GHz luminosity to 6 μm luminosity) across the four radio samples. Exploring the potential mechanisms behind this enhancement, we rule out star-formation and propose either small-scale synchrotron jets, frustrated jets, or dusty winds interacting with the interstellar medium; the latter two scenarios would provide a more direct connection between opacity (dust; gas) and the production of the radio emission. In our future study, using new multi-band uGMRT data, we aim to robustly distinguish between these scenarios.