Binary quasars from LQAC-2

In the second release of the general compiled catalogue Large Quasar Astrometric Catalogue (LQAC), 187504 objects are recorded. From this catalogue, we carry out statistical studies dealing with several topics: the astrometric accuracy of the quasars, their spatial location, the distribution of the distance to the closest neighbour, the identification of binary quasars, the completness of catalogues at a given magnitude and the estimation of the number of quasars expected to be detected by the astrometric space mission Gaia.

We analyse the astrometric improvements brought by the LQAC-2 in terms of equatorial coordinates off-sets. We plot the bi-dimensional spatial distribution of the LQAC-2 quasars according to their equatorial, galactic, and ecliptic coordinates, thus exploring the anisotropy of the distribution. We compare the observed distribution of closest neighbours with the theoretical values based on a Poisson distribution.