Q&A: Galaxies, Galaxy Clusters, AGN, and Quasars

Q:
Where can I access details about the new discovery Q2345+007? I wonder about the flux or magnitude and peaks in the spectrums of both quasars. Can you determine if they are gravitationally bound?

A:
The paper is posted on the following web site: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0202081 In the discussion section of this paper, the authors say that the quasars are about 200,000 light years apart. There is no observational evidence that the quasars are gravitationally bound, but their close proximity is consistent with models for collisions between galaxies in which they become bound and eventually merge to form a more massive black hole a period of several hundred million years.