The quest for optically selected type 2 quasars

C. Vignali, A. Del Moro, D.M. Alexander, A. Comastri

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Although many Type 2 quasars, the long-sought after "big cousins" of local Seyfert 2 galaxies, have been recently discovered by Chandra and XMM-Newton, till few years ago their number from optical surveys was extremely limited, casting some doubts on the efficiency of these surveys in detecting luminous, high-ionization, narrow emission-line AGN. Here we provide the results from an X-ray survey (using Chandra and XMM-Newton) of Type 2 quasar candidates selected from the SDSS and PSS.