This paper describes the design and implementation of a facility simulator for the 4 metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) project, a new survey instrument proposed for the ESO VISTA telescope. The 4MOST Facility Simulator (4FS) has seve
ral roles, firstly to optimise the design of the instrument, secondly to devise a survey strategy for the wide field design reference surveys that are proposed for 4MOST, and thirdly to verify that 4MOST, as designed, can indeed achieve its primary science goals. We describe the overall structure of the 4FS, together with details of some important 4FS subsystems. We present the initial results from the 4FS which illustrate clearly the value of having a functioning facility simulator very early in the conceptual design phase of this large project.
We have analyzed the first XMM-Newton, Swift and archival ROSAT PSPC observations of the quasar LBQS 0102-2713.The object was selected from the ROSAT archive as being notable due to the steep soft X-ray photon index and due to the UV brightness based
on HST and optical spectroscopic observations. The first XMM-Newton observations carried out in December 2009 and the first Swift observations from 2010 have confirmed the steepness of the soft X-ray photon index, which ranges between 3.35 and 4.41 for the different XMM-Newton and ROSAT detectors, the UV brightness of the source and the absence of significant absorption by neutral hydrogen. The new data allow a combined spectral fitting to the Swift UVOT and the XMM-Newton/ROSAT data which results in a huge luminosity of (6.2+-0.2)x10^47 erg s^(-1) and alpha_ox values ranging between (-1.87+-0.11) and (-2.11+-0.12). The nature of the soft X-ray emission can be explained as local Comptonized emission of the UV disc photons in the pseudo-Newtonian potential. The black hole mass is estimated from the Mg II line and translates into an Eddington ratio of L/L_edd = 18(+33)(-12). For the dimensionless electron temperature of the plasma cloud theta = kT_e/ (m_e c^2) we derive an upper limit of about 10 keV.
We have studied the SED of the quasar LBQS 0102-2713. The available multiwavelength data are one optical spectrum between 3200 and 7400 A, 7 HST FOS spectra between 1700 and 2300 A, one GALEX NUV flux density and a K_S magnitude obtained from NED, an
d 3 public ROSAT PSPC pointed observations in the 0.1$-$2.4 keV energy band. The alpha_ox values obtained are -2.3 and -2.2, respectively, comparable to BAL quasars. The ROSAT photon index is 6.0+-1.3. The 2500 A luminosity density is about a factor of 10 higher compared to the mean of the most luminous SDSS quasars. We argue that the object might be indicative for a new class of quasars with an unusual combination in their UV-, X-ray, and N_H properties.
We present optical and X-ray data for a sample of serendipitous XMM-Newton sources that are selected to have 0.5-2 keV vs 2-4.5 keV X-ray hardness ratios which are harder than the X-ray background. The sources have 2-4.5 keV X-ray flux >= 10^-14 cgs,
and in this paper we examine a subsample of 42 optically bright (r < 21) sources; this subsample is 100 per cent spectroscopically identified. All but one of the optical counterparts are extragalactic, and we argue that the single exception, a Galactic M star, is probably a coincidental association. The X-ray spectra are consistent with heavily absorbed power laws (21.8 < log NH < 23.4), and all of them appear to be absorbed AGN. The majority of the sources show only narrow emission lines in their optical spectra, implying that they are type-2 AGN. Only a small fraction of the sources (7/42) show broad optical emission lines, and all of these have NH < 10^23 cm^-2. This implies that ratios of X-ray absorption to optical/UV extinction equivalent to > 100 times the Galactic gas-to-dust ratio are rare in AGN absorbers (at most a few percent of the population), and may be restricted to broad absorption-line QSOs. Seven objects appear to have an additional soft X-ray component in addition to the heavily absorbed power law. We consider the implications of our results in the light of the AGN unified scheme. We find that the soft components in narrow-line objects are consistent with the unified scheme provided that > 4 per cent of broad-line AGN have ionised absorbers that attenuate their soft X-ray flux by >50 per cent. In at least one of the X-ray absorbed, broad-line AGN in our sample the X-ray spectrum requires an ionised absorber, consistent with this picture.
