AGN candidates in the VVV near-IR galaxy catalogue

Abstract

The goal of this work is to search for Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) in the Galactic disc at very low latitudes with |b| < 2◦. For this, we studied the five sources from the VVV near-infrared (IR) galaxy catalogue that have also WISE counterparts and present variability in the VIrac VAriable Classification Ensemble (VIVACE) catalogue. In the near-IR colour-colour diagrams, these objects have in general redder colours compared to the rest of the sources in the field. In the mid-IR ones, they are located in the AGN region, however, there is a source that presents the highest interstellar extinction and different mid-IR colours to be a young stellar object (YSO). We also studied the source variability using two different statistical methods. The fractional variability amplitude σrms ranges from 12.6 to 33.8, being in concordance with previous results found for type-1 AGNs. The slopes of the light curves are in the range (2.6-4.7) × 10-4 mag d-1, also in agreement with results reported on quasars variability. The combination of all these results suggest that four galaxies are type-1 AGN candidates, whereas the fifth source likely a YSO candidate.