PKS 2349–014: A Luminous Quasar with Thin Wisps, a Large Off-Center Nebulosity, and a Close Companion Galaxy

HST images (WFC2) of \pks show that this luminous nearby quasar isinteracting with diffuse (presumably galactic) material. Two thin wisps thathave a total extent of about 20 kpc (for $H_0 = 100$ \kms ${\rm Mpc}^{-1}$ and$\Omega_0 = 1.0$) are observed to approximately surround the quasar. One of thewisps appears to pass through a companion galaxy that is located at a projecteddistance of three~kpc from the center of the quasar light. The companiongalaxy, if located at the distance of \pks, has an intrinsic size andluminosity similar to the Large Magellanic Cloud. A faint extended nebulosity,which is detected over a region of 35 kpc by 50 kpc and is centered about 5 kpcfrom the quasar nucleus, overlaps the wisps. The immediate environment of \pksis different from the enivronments of the other eight luminous quasars that wehave studied previously with HST. If the multiple light components of the HSTimages are fit to a single de~Vaucouleurs profile, as was done in previousanalyses of ground--based data, then the result obtained for the totalluminosity of the model galaxy is in agreement with the earlier ground-basedstudies.Comment: Submitted to ApJ Letters, uuencoded postscript file, three postscript figures are available anonymous ftp at ftp://eku.ias.edu/pub/best/ as pks2349fig1.ps, pks2349fig2.ps, and pks2349fig3.p