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Hubble Space Telescope Images of a Sample of Twenty Nearby Luminous Quasars

Observations with the Wide-Field Camera of the Hubble Space Telescope are presented for a representative sample of 20 intrinsically luminous quasars with redshifts smaller than 0.30. These observations show that luminous quasars occur in diverse environments that include ellipticals as bright as the brightest cluster galaxies (2), apparently normal ellipticals (10), apparently normal spirals with H II regions (3), complex systems of gravitationally interacting components (3), and faint surrounding nebulosity (2). The quasar host galaxies are centered on the quasar to the accuracy of our measurements, 0.4 kpc. There are more radio quiet quasars in galaxies that appear to be ellipticals (7) than in spiral hosts (3), contrary to expectations. The average luminosity of the hosts is 2.2 magnitudes brighter than expected for a field galaxy luminosity function. We detect eight companion galaxies within projected distances of 10 kpc from quasar nuclei. Best figs. at http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jnb/Html/preprints.html