ISO Observations of Quasars and Quasar Hosts

Abstract

The Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), launched in November 1995, allows us to measure the far-infrared (far-IR) emission of quasars in greater detail and over a wider energy range than previously possible. In this paper, preliminary results in a study of the 5--200 $μm$ continuum of quasars and active galaxies are presented. Comparison of the spectral energy distributions show that, if the far-IR emission from quasars is thermal emission from galaxian dust, the host galaxies of quasars must contain dust in quantities comparable to IR luminous galaxies rather than normal spiral galaxies. In the near-IR, the ISO data confirm an excess due to a warm `AGN-related' dust component, possibly from the putative molecular torus. We report detection of the high-redshift quasar, 1202-0727, in the near-IR indicating that it is unusually IR-bright compared with low-redshift quasars.