NICMOS Observations of Low‐Redshift Quasar Host Galaxies

We have obtained Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer images of16 radio quiet quasars observed as part of a project to investigate the``luminosity/host-mass limit.'' The limit results were presented in McLeod,Rieke, & Storrie-Lombardi (1999). In this paper, we present the imagesthemselves, along with 1- and 2-dimensional analyses of the host galaxyproperties. We find that our model-independent 1D technique is reliable for useon ground-based data at low redshifts; that many radio-quiet quasars live indeVaucouleurs-law hosts, although some of the techniques used to determine hosttype are questionable; that complex structure is found in many of the hosts,but that there are some hosts that are very smooth and symmetric; and that thenuclei radiate at ~2-20% of the Eddington rate based on the assumption that allgalaxies have central black holes with a constant mass fraction of 0.6%.Despite targeting hard-to-resolve hosts, we have failed to find any that implysuper-Eddington accretion rates.