High-redshift quasars found in Sloan Digital Sky Survey commissioning data. II. The spring Equatorial Stripe

This is the second paper in a series aimed at finding high-redshift quasars from five-color (u'g'r'i'z') imaging data taken along the Celestial Equator by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) during its commissioning phase. In this paper, we present 22 high-redshift quasars (z > 3.6) discovered from similar to 250 deg(2) of data in the spring Equatorial Stripe, plus photometry for two previously known high-redshift quasars in the same region of the sky. Our success rate in identifying high-redshift quasars is 68%. Five of the newly discovered quasars have redshifts higher than 4.6 (z = 4.62, 4.69, 4.70, 4.92, and 5.03). All the quasars have i* < 20.2 with absolute magnitude -28.8 < M < M(B) -26.1 (h = 0.5, q(0) = 0.5). Several of the quasars show unusual emission and absorption features in their spectra, including an object at z = 4.62 without detectable emission lines, and a broad absorption line (BAL) quasar at z = 4.92.