Near-infrared spectra of 27 SDSS quasars

The spectrum has been constructed from observations of 27 quasars obtained at the NASA IRTF telescope and satisfying the criteria Ks<14.5 and M_i_<-23; the redshift range is 0.118<z<0.418. The signal-to-noise ratio is moderate, reaching a maximum of 150 between 1.6 and 1.9um.

While a power-law fit to the continuum of the composite spectrum requires two breaks, a single power-law slope of alpha=-0.92 plus a 1260K blackbody provides an excellent description of the spectrum from H{alpha} to 3.5um, strongly suggesting the presence of significant quantities of hot dust in this blue-selected quasar sample. We measure intensities and line widths for 10 lines, finding that the Paschen line ratios rule out case B recombination.