TY - JOUR
T1 - SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey Data Release 12
T2 - galaxy target selection and large scale structure catalogues
AU - Reid, Beth
AU - Ho, Shirley
AU - Padmanabhan, Nikhil
AU - Percival, Will J.
AU - Tinker, Jeremy
AU - Tojeiro, Rita
AU - White, Martin
AU - Eisenstein, Daniel J.
AU - Maraston, Claudia
AU - Ross, Ashley J.
AU - Sanchez, Ariel G.
AU - Schlegel, David
AU - Sheldon, Erin
AU - Strauss, Michael A.
AU - Thomas, Daniel
AU - Wake, David
AU - Beutler, Florian
AU - Bizyaev, Dmitry
AU - Bolton, Adam S.
AU - Brownstein, Joel R.
AU - Chuang, Chia-Hsun
AU - Dawson, Kyle
AU - Harding, Paul
AU - Kitaura, Francisco-Shu
AU - Leauthaud, Alexie
AU - Masters, Karen
AU - McBride, Cameron K.
AU - More, Surhud
AU - Olmstead, Matthew D.
AU - Oravetz, Daniel
AU - Nuza, Sebastian E.
AU - Pan, Kaike
AU - Parejko, John
AU - Pforr, Janine
AU - Prada, Francisco
AU - Rodriguez-Torres, Sergio
AU - Salazar-Albornoz, Salvador
AU - Samushia, Lado
AU - Schneider, Donald P.
AU - Scoccola, Claudia G.
AU - Simmons, Audrey
AU - Vargas-Magana, Mariana
PY - 2016/1/11
Y1 - 2016/1/11
N2 - The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) III project, has provided the largest survey of galaxy redshifts available to date, in terms of both the number of galaxy redshifts measured by a single survey, and the effective cosmological volume covered. Key to analysing the clustering of these data to provide cosmological measurements is understanding the detailed properties of this sample. Potential issues include variations in the target catalogue caused by changes either in the targeting algorithm or properties of the data used, the pattern of spectroscopic observations, the spatial distribution of targets for which redshifts were not obtained, and variations in the target sky density due to observational systematics. We document here the target selection algorithms used to create the galaxy samples that comprise BOSS. We also present the algorithms used to create large scale structure catalogues for the final Data Release (DR12) samples and the associated random catalogues that quantify the survey mask. The algorithms are an evolution of those used by the BOSS team to construct catalogues from earlier data, and have been designed to accurately quantify the galaxy sample. The code used, designated MKSAMPLE, is released with this paper.
AB - The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) III project, has provided the largest survey of galaxy redshifts available to date, in terms of both the number of galaxy redshifts measured by a single survey, and the effective cosmological volume covered. Key to analysing the clustering of these data to provide cosmological measurements is understanding the detailed properties of this sample. Potential issues include variations in the target catalogue caused by changes either in the targeting algorithm or properties of the data used, the pattern of spectroscopic observations, the spatial distribution of targets for which redshifts were not obtained, and variations in the target sky density due to observational systematics. We document here the target selection algorithms used to create the galaxy samples that comprise BOSS. We also present the algorithms used to create large scale structure catalogues for the final Data Release (DR12) samples and the associated random catalogues that quantify the survey mask. The algorithms are an evolution of those used by the BOSS team to construct catalogues from earlier data, and have been designed to accurately quantify the galaxy sample. The code used, designated MKSAMPLE, is released with this paper.
KW - astro-ph.CO
KW - astro-ph.GA
KW - cosmology: observations
KW - large-scale structure of Universe
U2 - 10.1093/mnras/stv2382
DO - 10.1093/mnras/stv2382
M3 - Article
SN - 0035-8711
VL - 455
SP - 1553
EP - 1573
JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
IS - 2
ER -