Type II quasars are luminous Active Galactic Nuclei whose centers are obscured by large amounts of gas and dust .
In this paper we present 3-band HST images of nine type II quasars with redshifts 0.2 < z < 0.4 selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey based on their emission line properties .
The intrinsic luminosities of these AGNs are estimated to be -24 > M _ { B } > -26 , but optical obscuration allows their host galaxies to be studied unencumbered by bright nuclei .
Each object has been imaged in three continuum filters ( ‘ UV ’ , ‘ blue ’ and ‘ yellow ’ ) placed between the strong emission lines .
The spectacular , high quality images reveal a wealth of details about the structure of the host galaxies and their environments .
Six of the nine galaxies in the sample are ellipticals with de Vaucouleurs light profiles , one object has a well-defined disk component and the remaining two have marginal disks .
Stellar populations of type II quasar hosts are more luminous ( by a median of 0.3 - 0.7 mag , depending on the wavelength ) and bluer ( by about 0.4 mag ) than are M _ { * } galaxies at the same redshift .
When smooth fits to stellar light are subtracted from the images , we find both positive and negative residuals that become more prominent toward shorter wavelengths .
We argue that the negative residuals are due to kpc-scale dust obscuration , while most positive residuals are due to the light from the nucleus scattered off interstellar material in the host galaxy .
Scattered light makes a significant contribution to the broad band continuum emission and can be the dominant component of the extended emission in the UV in extreme cases .