An imaging survey of fields around quasars. II - The association of galaxies with quasars

Abstract

Images centered on 108 quasars with redshifts between 0.05 and 2.05 were obtained using the direct-SIT camera on the Palomar 1.52 m telescope. This paper presents the analyzed data without a priori assumptions about the nature of quasar redshifts and shows that the results are consistent with the hypothesis that quasars are associated with galaxies at the cosmological distances implied by the quasar redshifts. By assuming that quasars are at their cosmological redshift distances, some of the physical properties of the groups and clusters that are apparently associated with the quasars are derived. Marginally significant differences were found between the environments of radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars.