We present a sample of 305 QSO candidates having |b|<30{deg}, the majority with GALEX magnitudes near-UV<18.75. To generate this sample, we apply UV-IR color selection criteria to photometric data from the Ultraviolet Galactic Plane Survey as part of GALEX-CAUSE, the Million Quasars Catalog, Gaia DR2, and Pan-STARRS DR1. 165 of these 305 candidate UV-bright active galactic nuclei (AGN; 54%) have published spectroscopic redshifts from 45 different surveys, confirming them as AGN. We further obtained low-dispersion, optical, long-slit spectra with the Apache Point Observatory 3.5m, MDM 2.4m, and MDM 1.3m telescopes for 84 of the candidates, and confirm 86% (N=72) as AGN, generally with z<0.6. Of these 72 confirmed AGN, 25 are newly discovered low-latitude QSOs without any previous spectroscopy. These sources fill a gap in the Galactic latitude coverage of the available samples of known UV-bright QSO background probes. Along with a description of the confirmed QSO properties, we provide the fully reduced, flux- and wavelength-calibrated spectra of 72 low-latitude QSOs through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes. Future Hubble Space Telescope/Cosmic Origins Spectrograph spectroscopy of these low-Galactic-latitude QSOs has the potential to transform our view of the Milky Way and Local Group circumgalactic medium.
Cone search capability for table J/ApJS/273/21/table1 (Plane QSO candidates)
Cone search capability for table J/ApJS/273/21/table2 (Plane QSO candidate spectroscopic redshifts)
