11.4. Demographics of nuclear activity in nearby galaxies

Between 1984 and 1990 we conducted a survey at Palomar Observatory (Filippenko and Sargent 1985) to quantify the luminosity function of nearby active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The Hale 5 m telescope was used to obtain high-quality, moderate-resolution optical spectra of a nearly statistically complete sample of about 500 bright ( B T ≤ 12.5 mag), northern (δ > 0°) galaxies (see Ho et al. 1995 for details). The survey has now been completed, and the first scientific results are reported in a series of papers by Ho et al. (1997a, b, c).