The SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey : Luminous Red Galaxy Target Selection
View/ Open
Date
08/06/2016Author
Keywords
Metadata
Show full item recordAltmetrics Handle Statistics
Altmetrics DOI Statistics
Abstract
We describe the algorithm used to select the Luminous Red Galaxy (LRG) sample for the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV (SDSS-IV) using photometric data from both the SDSS and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). LRG targets are required to meet a set of color selection criteria and have z-band and i-band MODEL magnitudes z <19.95 and 19.9 <i < 21.8, respectively. Our algorithm selects roughly 50 LRG targets per square degree, the great majority of which lie in the redshift range 0.6 <z <1.0 (median redshift 0.71). We demonstrate that our methods are highly effective at eliminating stellar contamination and lower-redshift galaxies. We perform a number of tests using spectroscopic data from SDSS-III/BOSS to determine the redshift reliability of our target selection and its ability to meet the science requirements of eBOSS. The SDSS spectra are of high enough signal-to-noise ratio that at least 89% of the target sample yields secure redshift measurements. We also present tests of the uniformity and homogeneity of the sample, demonstrating that it should be clean enough for studies of the large-scale structure of the universe at higher redshifts than SDSS-III/BOSS LRGs reached.
Citation
Prakash , A , Licquia , T C , Newman , J A , Ross , A J , Myers , A D , Dawson , K S , Kneib , J-P , Percival , W J , Bautista , J E , Comparat , J , Tinker , J L , Schlegel , D J , Tojeiro , R , Ho , S , Lang , D , Rao , S M , McBride , C K , Ben Zhu , G , Brownstein , J R , Bailey , S , Bolton , A S , Delubac , T , Mariappan , V , Blanton , M R , Reid , B , Schneider , D P , Seo , H-J , Carnero Rosell , A & Prada , F 2016 , ' The SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey : Luminous Red Galaxy Target Selection ' , Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series , vol. 224 , no. 2 , pp. 4478 . https://doi.org/10.3847/0067-0049/224/2/34
Publication
Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0067-0049Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2016, The American Astronomical Society This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the final published version of the work which was originally published at https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/0067-0049/224/2/34
Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.