We present first results from our study of the host galaxies and environments of quasars in Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA), a multiwavelength photometric and spectroscopic survey for ∼300,000 galaxies over ∼300 deg2, to a limiting magnitude of r ∼ 20 mag. We use a GAIA-selected sample of ∼350 quasars at z < 0.3 in GAMA. For all the quasars, we determine all surrounding GAMA galaxies and measure their star formation (SF) rate and SF history, and the host galaxy morphology and group membership of the quasars. As a comparison sample of inactive galaxies, we use 1000 subsets of galaxies in GAMA, matched in redshift and galaxy stellar mass to the quasars. We find that quasar activity does not depend on the large-scale environment (cluster/group/void), although quasars tend to prefer satellite location in their environment. Compared to inactive galaxies, quasars are preferentially hosted in bulge-dominated galaxies and have higher SF rates, both overall and averaged over the last 10 and 100 Myr. Quasars also have shorter median SF timescales, shorter median time since the last SF burst, and higher metallicity than inactive galaxies. We discuss these results in terms of triggering mechanisms of the quasar activity and the role of quasars in galaxy evolution.

We present MIR spectroscopy and photometry obtained with CanariCam on the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio CANARIAS for a sample of 20 nearby, MIR bright and X-ray luminous quasi-stellar objects (QSOs). We find that for the majority of QSOs the MIR emission is unresolved at angular scales ∼0.3 arcsec. We derive the properties of the dusti tori that surround the nucleus based on these observations and find significant differences in the parameters compared with a sample of Seyfert 1 and 2 nuclei. We also find evidence for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) features in the spectra, indicative of star formation, more centrally peaked (on scales of a few hundred pc) than previously believed.

We observed a volume-limited sample of 19 luminous type 1 QSO host galaxies at MV ~ −23 mag and redshift 0.06 < z < 0.2 (Jahnke et al. 2004) using the VLT/VIMOS Integral Field Spectrograph. After removal of the QSO contribution (using the method of Husemann et al. 2008), we construct 2D intensity maps and gas velocity fields of the host galaxies in the Hα and [O iii] emission lines. Two representative cases are shown in Figure 1.