IDENTIFICATION OF 1.4 MILLION ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI IN THE MID-INFRARED USING WISE DATA

摘要

We present an all-sky sample of approximate to 1.4 million active galactic nuclei (AGNs) meeting a two-color infrared photometric selection criteria for AGNs as applied to sources from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer final catalog release (AllWISE). We assess the spatial distribution and optical properties of our sample and find that the results are consistent with expectations for AGNs. These sources have a mean density of approximate to 38 AGNs per square degree on the sky, and their apparent magnitude distribution peaks at g approximate to 20, extending to objects as faint as g approximate to 26. We test the AGN selection criteria against a large sample of optically identified stars and determine the "leakage" (that is, the probability that a star detected in an optical survey will be misidentified as a quasi-stellar object (QSO) in our sample) rate to be <= 4.0 x 10(-5). We conclude that our sample contains almost no optically identified stars (<= 0.041%), making this sample highly promising for future celestial reference frame work as it significantly increases the number of all-sky, compact extragalactic objects. We further compare our sample to catalogs of known AGNs/QSOs and find a completeness value of greater than or similar to 84% (that is, the probability of correctly identifying a known AGN/QSO is at least 84%) for AGNs brighter than a limiting magnitude of R less than or similar to 19. Our sample includes approximately 1.1 million previously uncataloged AGNs.