Poster abstract details

In preparation for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which will revolutionize time-domain astronomy, it is critical that we understand variable phenomena as deeply as possible. Variability is arguably the defining feature of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), and is observed in every waveband, so variability studies are fundamental to understanding the extreme physical conditions of accretion disks near supermassive black holes. We are using the QUEST camera on the ESO-Schmidt telescope to obtain well sampled optical light curves of AGN in well-studied extragalactic fields that already have multiwavelength observations. The survey uses a broadband filter, the Q-band, similar to the union of the g and the r filters. We have a total of $\sim 500.000$ light curves in our five fields. In this poster, I will present our results on variability-based AGN selection. We have selected AGNs candidates in the more problematic region of the colour-colour parameter space, where high-redshift AGN resemble stars, and we have spectroscopically confirmed thirty of them achieving a 90% success rate.