Finding Quasars behind the Galactic Plane

Quasars behind the Galactic Plane (GPQs) are important astrometric references and useful probes of Milky Way gas, yet difficult to find. This project aims to select quasar candidates at |b| <= 20 deg with Machine Learning, and identify the candidates with optical telescopes.

1. Candidate selection methods and the GPQ candidate catalog

The paper (Fu et al 2021 ApJS 254 6):

Title: Finding Quasars behind the Galactic Plane. I. Candidate Selections with Transfer Learning.
ADS: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021ApJS..254....6F/abstract
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4365/abe85e
arXiv: 2102.09770
Bibcode: 2021ApJS..254….6F

The GPQ candidate catalog:

Description page: https://nadc.china-vo.org/article/20200722160959?id=101051
Download link: http://paperdata.china-vo.org/FuYuming/table-05.fits