APOGEE-1 Ancillary Targets

For all SDSS spectroscopic data, information about how that object was targeted for spectroscopy is included in the object's Target Flags (see Zasowski et al. 2013 for a complete description of all APOGEE targeting). Information about whether an APOGEE target was selected for one or more ancillary target programs is included in the flags APOGEE_TARGET1 and APOGEE_TARGET2. (These parameters, like all SDSS flag data, are stored as bitmasks. For more information on how to work with such data, see the description of SDSS bitmasks).

This page describes APOGEE's ancillary targets in general; the pages linked from the list below describe how targets were selected for specific ancillary targeting programs. Ancillary targets were requested in multiple calls for proposals made to the SDSS-III collaboration, and DR15 contains targets from proposals accepted in all calls.

Ancillary programs range from those that just use a few fibers on already-planned APOGEE fields to some that involve entirely new plates. The fraction of ancillary targets per field thus ranges from 0-100% (but is generally very small, except for the dedicated "new" fields). Fibers were alloted such that ancillary targets used approximately 5% of APOGEE's total fiber-visits. Ancillary targets were given high priority on plates, above the main survey sample, because of their small numbers and high science impact.

In addition to the anticipated ancillary opportunities during APOGEE's bright time, SDSS-III issued a call for proposals to fill some dark time made available in late 2013 and early 2014, as a result of the BOSS survey finishing earlier than expected. Along with some of the ancillary projects listed above, the following programs received APOGEE observations during this time.

RV Variability in IC 348

RV Variability in Kepler

The DR15 documentation includes an index of the values of APOGEE_TARGET1 and APOGEE_TARGET2 that correspond to each additional APOGEE target program.