from III - The Broad Line Region: Variability and Structure
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
Abstract
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has been producing data from regularly scheduled observations for some time now. At this juncture, it is an appropriate time to review some of the areas where instruments such as the Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS), when coupled with ground-based data, may improve studies of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and, hopefully, stir the imaginations of the theorists! We show examples of objects where the data indicate that the emission line properties of high- and low-luminosity objects are similar, lending support to relatively simple models in which the emission line regions of AGN scale homologously. We note, however, that the definition of what the ‘normal’ properties of AGN are rather than individual peculiarities will have to await complete samples of objects with data covering as large a wavelength range as possible.
Line Ratios.
It has become feasible in recent years to study the Balmer lines of high redshift QSOs in some detail and to determine velocity-resolved ratios such as those of Lyα/Hα – see, for example,. Even more recently, it has become possible to regularly obtain UV data with the HST and to perform more detailed analysis than was possible using IUE spectra. As an example, in Figure 1 we show a comparison between the Lyα/Hα line ratios in two radio-loud objects of similar linewidth and velocity shifts.
The 3C273 data are from [4] and the PKS 1448 – 232 are taken from [2].
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