Spectroscopic Target Selection in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: The Main Galaxy Sample

Michael A. Strauss(Princeton University), David H. Weinberg(Institute for Advanced Study), Robert H. Lupton(Princeton University), Vijay K. Narayanan(Princeton University), James Annis(Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), Mariangela Bernardi(University of Chicago), Michael R. Blanton(Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), Scott Burles(University of Chicago), Andrew J. Connolly(University of Pittsburgh), Julianne J. Dalcanton(University of Washington), Mamoru Doi(Tokyo University of Science), Daniel J. Eisenstein(University of Arizona), Joshua A. Frieman(Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), M. Fukugita(Institute for Advanced Study), James E. Gunn(Princeton University), Željko Ivezić(Princeton University), S. Kent(Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), Rita S. J. Kim(Johns Hopkins University), G. R. Knapp(Princeton University), Richard G. Kron(Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), Jeffrey A. Munn(United States Naval Observatory), Heidi Jo Newberg(Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), Robert C. Nichol(Carnegie Mellon University), Sadanori Okamura(Tokyo University of Science), Thomas Quinn(University of Washington), M. Richmond(Rochester Institute of Technology), David J. Schlegel(Princeton University), Kazuhiro Shimasaku(Tokyo University of Science), Mark SubbaRao(University of Chicago), Alexander S. Szalay(Johns Hopkins University), Dan Vanden Berk(Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), Michael S. Vogeley(Drexel University), B. Yanny(Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), Naoki Yasuda(National Astronomical Observatory of Japan), Donald G. York(University of Chicago), Idit Zehavi(Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)
The Astronomical Journal
September 1, 2002
10.1086/342343
Cited by 1,916Open Access
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Abstract

We describe the algorithm that selects the main sample of galaxies for spectroscopy in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey from the photometric data obtained by the imaging survey. Galaxy photometric properties are measured using the Petrosian magnitude system, which measures flux in apertures determined by the shape of the surface brightness profile. The metric aperture used is essentially independent of cosmological surface brightness dimming, foreground extinction, sky brightness, and the galaxy central surface brightness. The main galaxy sample consists of galaxies with r-band Petrosian magnitude r < 17.77 and r-band Petrosian half-light surface brightness < 24.5 magnitudes per square arcsec. These cuts select about 90 galaxy targets per square degree, with a median redshift of 0.104. We carry out a number of tests to show that (a) our star-galaxy separation criterion is effective at eliminating nearly all stellar contamination while removing almost no genuine galaxies, (b) the fraction of galaxies eliminated by our surface brightness cut is very small (0.1%), (c) the completeness of the sample is high, exceeding 99%, and (d) the reproducibility of target selection based on repeated imaging scans is consistent with the expected random photometric errors. (abridged)

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