BOSS Target Selection

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	BOSSTARGET_V v2_0_18 IDLUTILS_V v5_4_24 PHOTOOP_V v1_10_26 PHOTO_SWEEP dr8_final PHOTO_RESOLVE 2010-05-23 PHOTO_CALIB dr8_final	QSO ngc targets QSO SGC targets	QSO bonus chunks boss29-*.
main015	BOSSTARGET_V v2_0_18 IDLUTILS_V v5_4_24 PHOTOOP_V v1_10_25 PHOTO_SWEEP dr8_final PHOTO_RESOLVE 2010-05-23 PHOTO_CALIB dr8_final	QSO SGC targets	QSO chunk boss28
main014	BOSSTARGET_V v2_0_17 IDLUTILS_V v5_4_23 PHOTOOP_V v1_10_1 PHOTO_SWEEP dr8_final PHOTO_RESOLVE 2010-05-23 PHOTO_CALIB dr8_final	QSO NGC targets	QSO chunk boss24-boss27
main013	BOSSTARGET_V v2_0_16 IDLUTILS_V trunk PHOTOOP_V v1_10_2 PHOTO_SWEEP dr8_final PHOTO_RESOLVE 2010-05-23 PHOTO_CALIB dr8_final	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	BOSSTARGET_V v2_0_15a IDLUTILS_V v5_4_24 PHOTOOP_V v1_10_2 PHOTO_SWEEP dr8_final PHOTO_RESOLVE 2010-05-23 PHOTO_CALIB dr8_final	QSO NGC targets QSO SGC targets	QSO chunk boss18 These targets were actually bootstrapped from main011 due to some disk failures at LBL.
main011	BOSSTARGET_V v2_0_15 IDLUTILS_V v5_4_24 PHOTOOP_V v1_10_2 PHOTO_SWEEP dr8_final PHOTO_RESOLVE 2010-05-23 PHOTO_CALIB dr8_final	QSO NGC target file QSO SGC target file	QSO chunk boss17
main010	BOSSTARGET_V v2_0_14 IDLUTILS_V v5_4_22 PHOTOOP_V v1_10_2 PHOTO_SWEEP dr8_final PHOTO_RESOLVE 2010-05-23 PHOTO_CALIB dr8_final	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	BOSSTARGET_V v2_0_13 IDLUTILS_V v5_4_24 PHOTOOP_V v1_10_2 PHOTO_SWEEP dr8_final PHOTO_RESOLVE 2010-05-23 PHOTO_CALIB dr8_final	LRG target file	LRGs for chunk boss15-* targeted from this run. This differs from main008 in the limit ifiber2mag - extinction < 21.5
main008	BOSSTARGET_V v2_0_9 IDLUTILS_V v5_4_20 PHOTOOP_V v1_10_2 PHOTO_SWEEP dr8_final PHOTO_RESOLVE 2010-05-23 PHOTO_CALIB dr8_final	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	BOSSTARGET_V v2_0_5 IDLUTILS_V v5_4_13 PHOTOOP_V v1_9_4 PHOTO_SWEEP 2009-11-16.v2 PHOTO_RESOLVE 2009-11-16 PHOTO_CALIB fall09i	LRG target file	LRGs for Chunk boss7-boss11 targeted from this run.
main006	BOSSTARGET_V v2_0_4 IDLUTILS_V v5_4_11 PHOTOOP_V v1_9_4 PHOTO_SWEEP 2009-11-16.v2 PHOTO_RESOLVE 2009-11-16 PHOTO_CALIB fall09i	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	BOSSTARGET_V v2_0_3 IDLUTILS_V v5_4_11 PHOTOOP_V v1_9_4 PHOTO_SWEEP 2009-11-16.v2 PHOTO_RESOLVE 2009-11-16 PHOTO_CALIB fall09i	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	BOSSTARGET_V v2_0_2 IDLUTILS_V v5_4_11 PHOTOOP_V v1_9_4 PHOTO_SWEEP 2009-11-16 PHOTO_RESOLVE 2009-06-14 PHOTO_CALIB default0	STD target file	Chunks boss3+boss4 STD targeted from this run.
main002	BOSSTARGET_V v2_0_1 IDLUTILS_V v5_4_11 PHOTOOP_V v1_9_4 PHOTO_SWEEP 2009-11-16 PHOTO_RESOLVE 2009-06-14 PHOTO_CALIB default0	QSO target file LRG target file	Chunks boss3+boss4 QSO and LRG targeted from this run.No cut on calib_status.
comm2	BOSSTARGET_V v1_1_2 IDLUTILS_V v5_4_9 PHOTOOP_V v1_9_4 PHOTO_SWEEP 2009-09-28 PHOTO_RESOLVE 2009-06-14 PHOTO_CALIB default0	QSO target file LRG target file STD target file	Chunk boss2 LRG+QSO+STD
comm	BOSSTARGET_V v1_0_4 IDLUTILS_V v5_4_7 PHOTOOP_V v1_9_4 PHOTO_SWEEP 2009-06-14 PHOTO_RESOLVE 2009-06-14 PHOTO_CALIB default0	QSO target file LRG target file STD target file	Chunk boss1 LRG+QSO+STD

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.

The variability selected catalog used for quasars in chunk boss11 is described in Palanque-Delabrouille et al. 2011