BOSS Target Selection
Target Types
In BOSS there are four types of targets, which are described in more detail on the following pages:
Target selection is the process of selecting objects from the imaging survey for spectroscopic followup.
Target Runs Used in BOSS
A target run specifies both a target software version and a version of the data reductions. The following table contains information for the various runs of the targeting code. The tag version is marked BOSSTARGET_V
. For information on tiling chunks, see the tiling page.
Target Run | Version Info | URLs | Comments | ||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
main016 |
|
QSO ngc targets QSO SGC targets |
QSO bonus chunks boss29-*. |
||||||||||||
main015 |
|
QSO SGC targets | QSO chunk boss28 | ||||||||||||
main014 |
|
QSO NGC targets | QSO chunk boss24-boss27 | ||||||||||||
main013 |
|
QSO NGC targets QSO SGC targets |
QSO chunk boss19-boss23
A trunk version of idlutils was used but this has no affect on the targets |
||||||||||||
main012 |
|
QSO NGC targets QSO SGC targets |
QSO chunk boss18
These targets were actually bootstrapped from main011 due to some disk failures at LBL. |
||||||||||||
main011 |
|
QSO NGC target file QSO SGC target file |
QSO chunk boss17 | ||||||||||||
main010 |
|
QSO NGC target file QSO SGC target file |
QSO chunk boss16 These files include targets selected using multi-epoch photometry, when available. First chunk where new UKIDSS information is also included in the ExD processing when available, which is in turn used in the NN combinator. |
||||||||||||
main009 |
|
LRG target file | LRGs for chunk boss15-* targeted from this run. This differs from main008 in the limit ifiber2mag - extinction < 21.5 | ||||||||||||
main008 |
|
QSO NGC target file QSO edfinal QSO SGC target file LRG target file |
LRG chunks boss12-boss14 QSO chunks boss12-boss13 using "sgc40" subset. QSO chunk boss14 using "edcore-maskngc40" and bootstrapped from main008 using code in BOSSTARGET v2_0_12. This file was mistakenly used instead of edfinal-maskngc40; edcore is actually trunk but has the same targets. Should reference edfinal in the future. QSO chunk boss15 uses subset file edfinal-maskngc40 STD chunks boss12-* |
||||||||||||
main007 |
|
LRG target file | LRGs for Chunk boss7-boss11 targeted from this run. | ||||||||||||
main006 |
|
QSO NGC target file QSO SGC target file |
Chunk boss7-boss10 QSOs targeted from this run.ngc, masked for bad u data.
Subset file "maskngc", which masks out the bad u-band data, was used for boss7 but this is not *stated* in the plan-boss7.par file. Subset file "masksgc1" was used for boss9 Unlike "maskngc", this does not mask out bad data, but rather restricts to a smaller chunk of the SGC. Subset file "maskngc" was used for boss10. In principle "maskngc" should have been used for boss8 but I think it was not needed since the target area was further north than the "bad" u data runs. |
||||||||||||
main005 |
|
QSO target file LRG target file STD target file |
For QSO,LRG chunks boss5+boss6 targeted from this run.For STD chunks boss5-boss11 targeted from this run. No cut on calib_status. Full survey available at that time. |
||||||||||||
main004 |
|
STD target file | Chunks boss3+boss4 STD targeted from this run. | ||||||||||||
main002 |
|
QSO target file LRG target file |
Chunks boss3+boss4 QSO and LRG targeted from this run.No cut on calib_status. | ||||||||||||
comm2 |
|
QSO target file LRG target file STD target file |
Chunk boss2 LRG+QSO+STD | ||||||||||||
comm |
|
QSO target file LRG target file STD target file |
Chunk boss1 LRG+QSO+STD |
Targeting Software
Targets lists for galaxies, quasars and standards were generated using a unified software framework bosstarget
. This code can be checked out from the svn repository
svn export //www.sdss3.org/svn/repo/boss/bosstarget/tags/{tag} bosstarget-{tag}
Where {tag}
represents a "tagged" version of the code. Targets used for BOSS spectroscopic followup are always generated using a tagged version of bosstarget
To run the code, make sure the PHOTO_SWEEP
environment variable points to the location of your copy of the datasweeps Similarly, make sure PHOTO_RESOLVE
points to the relevant resolve files and PHOTO_CALIB
points to the relevant calib files.
Then the following IDL commands will execute targeting for a particular set of imaging runs and camcols
IDL> bt=obj_new('bosstarget') IDL> bt->self->process_runs, target_type, target_run, $ runs=runs, camcols=camcols
where target_type
is 'lrg','qso','std' and target_run
is an arbitrary string. There are more options documented in the code. The ->process_partial_runs
method can be used to process a set of runs. The targets can then be collated into a single file using ->gather
or the partial sets using ->gather_partial
.
After the collation, appropriate BOSS_TARGET1 flags can be applied to limit to a smaller subset of targets.
For QSOs a further trimming is applied in order to limit the target density to 40/sq degree in "cells" on the sky. This code is in /pro/bosstarget_util.pro
in the ->subreg_density_tune
.
Variability Selected Targets
The variability selected catalog used for quasars in chunk boss11 is described in Palanque-Delabrouille et al. 2011