Cyclops AGN/Gorjian

The Cyclops AGN team will be continuing the work of last year's AGNatha team, using WISE data to identify anomalous AGN in Gaia.

Context. Gaia is an astrometric mission measuring the position of millions of objects in the sky. An active galactic nucleus (AGN) is one example of such objects, and some AGNs register as having parallax or proper motion. AGNs should not register parallax or proper motion as they are in other galaxies, and are therefore far too distant for us to detect their parallax or proper motion. The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is a mission that has repeatedly mapped the sky in infrared wavelengths, and cataloged three quarters of a billion objects, of which there are over 4 million AGNs, which allows us a much larger sample size than what Gaia has identified on its own.
In 2023 a NASA/IPAC Teacher Archival Research Program (NITARP) team analyzed the WISE AGNs in Gaia so as to construct a catalog of the interesting and unusual AGNs with incorrectly measured parallaxes.

Aims. We will create a similar catalog for proper motion. Our team will analyze the proper motions of WISE identified AGNs for which there is astrometry from Gaia.The research will seek to identify a cause for the discrepancy between the astrometric measurements and identification as an AGN.

Methods. Our team will crossmatch identified AGNs from WISE with sources in Gaia Data Release 3 (DR3) that have proper motion. Once we have this larger catalog of anomalous targets, we will analyze it to see if there are other unique characteristics or environmental factors that they tend to share to gain insight as to why these anomalous readings are happening. This will include cross-referencing them with optical sky surveys.