The Low‐Resolution Spectrograph of the Hobby‐Eberly Telescope. II. Observations of Quasar Candidates from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey1,2

Abstract

This paper describes spectra of quasar candidates acquired during the commissioning phase of the Low-Resolution Spectrograph of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope. The objects were identified as possible quasars from multicolor image data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The ten sources had typical r ′ magnitudes of 19-20, except for one extremely red object with r ′ of ≈ 23. The data, obtained with exposure times between 10 and 25 minutes, reveal that the spectra of four candidates are essentially featureless and are not quasars, five are quasars with redshifts between 2.92 and 4.15 (including one Broad Absorption Line quasar), and the red source is a very late M star or early L dwarf.