2014A&A...570A..53M

Quasars can be used as a complementary tool to SN Ia to probe the distribution of dark energy in the Universe by measuring the time delay of the emission line with respect to the continuum. The understanding of the MgII emission line structure is important for cosmological application and for the black hole mass measurements of intermediate redshift quasars. Knowing the shape of MgII line and its variability allows for identifying which part of the line should be used to measure the time delay and the black hole mass. We thus aim at determining the structure and the variability of the MgII line, as well as the underlying FeII pseudo-continuum. We performed five spectroscopic observations of a quasar CTS C30.10 (z=0.9000) with the SALT telescope between December 2012 and March 2014, and we studied the variations in the spectral shape in the 2700Å-2900Å rest frame. We show that the MgII line in this source consists of two kinematic components, which makes the source representative of type B quasars. Both components were modeled well with a Lorentzian shape, and they vary in a similar way. The FeII contribution seems to be related only to the first (blue) MgII component. Broad band spectral fitting instead favor the use of the whole line profile. The contribution of the narrow line region to MgII is very low, below 2%. The MgII variability is lower than the variability of the continuum, which is consistent with the simple reprocessing scenario. The variability level of CTS C30.10 and the measurement accuracy of the line and continuum is high enough to expect that further monitoring will allow the time delay between the MgII line and continuum to be measured.