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 quasarsfrom five-color (u'g'r'i'z') imaging data taken along the Celestial Equator bythe Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) during its commissioning phase. In thispaper, we present 22 high-redshift quasars (z>3.6) discovered from ~250 deg^2of data in the spring Equatorial Stripe, plus photometry for two previouslyknown high-redshift quasars in the same region of sky. Our success rate ofidentifying high-redshift quasars is 68%. Five of the newly discovered quasarshave redshifts higher than 4.6 (z=4.62, 4.69, 4.70, 4.92 and 5.03). All thequasars have i* < 20.2 with absolute magnitude -28.8 < M_B < -26.1 (h=0.5,q_0=0.5). Several of the quasars show unusual emission and absorption featuresin their spectra, including an object at z=4.62 without detectable emissionlines, and a Broad Absorption Line (BAL) quasar at z=4.92.