High-Redshift Quasars Found in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Commissioning Data. II. The Spring Equatorial Stripe

This is the second paper in a series aimed at finding high-redshift quasars from five-color (u'g'r'i'z') imaging data taken along the Celestial Equator by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) during its commissioning phase. In this paper, we present 22 high-redshift quasars (z>3. 6) discovered from ~250 deg² of data in the spring Equatorial Stripe, plus photometry for two previously known high-redshift quasars in the same region of sky. Our success rate of identifying high-redshift quasars is 68%. Five of the newly discovered quasars have redshifts higher than 4. 6 (z=4. 62, 4. 69, 4. 70, 4. 92 and 5. 03). All the quasars have i* < 20. 2 with absolute magnitude -28. 8 < MB < -26. 1 (h=0. 5, q₀=0. 5). Several of the quasars show unusual emission and absorption features in their spectra, including an object at z=4. 62 without detectable emission lines, and a Broad Absorption Line (BAL) quasar at z=4. 92.