Bibcode
Pâris, I.; Petitjean, Patrick; Ross, Nicholas P.; Myers, Adam D.; Aubourg, Éric; Streblyanska, A.; Bailey, Stephen; Armengaud, Éric; Palanque-Delabrouille, Nathalie; Yèche, Christophe; Hamann, Fred; Strauss, Michael A.; Albareti, Franco D.; Bovy, Jo; Bizyaev, Dmitry; Niel Brandt, W.; Brusa, Marcella; Buchner, Johannes; Comparat, Johan; Croft, Rupert A. C.; Dwelly, Tom; Fan, Xiaohui; Font-Ribera, Andreu; Ge, Jian; Georgakakis, Antonis; Hall, Patrick B.; Jiang, Linhua; Kinemuchi, Karen; Malanushenko, Elena; Malanushenko, Viktor; McMahon, Richard G.; Menzel, Marie-Luise; Merloni, Andrea; Nandra, Kirpal; Noterdaeme, Pasquier; Oravetz, Daniel; Pan, Kaike; Pieri, Matthew M.; Prada, Francisco; Salvato, Mara; Schlegel, David J.; Schneider, Donald P.; Simmons, Audrey; Viel, Matteo; Weinberg, David H.; Zhu, Liu
Bibliographical reference
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 597, id.A79, 25 pp.
Advertised on:
1
2017
Journal
Citations
395
Refereed citations
375
Description
We present the Data Release 12 Quasar catalog (DR12Q) from the Baryon
Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
III. This catalog includes all SDSS-III/BOSS objects that were
spectroscopically targeted as quasar candidates during the full survey
and that are confirmed as quasars via visual inspection of the spectra,
have luminosities Mi [z = 2] < -20.5 (in a ΛCDM
cosmology with H0 = 70 km s-1 Mpc-1,
ΩM = 0.3, and ΩΛ = 0.7), and
either display at least one emission line with a full width at half
maximum (FWHM) larger than 500 km s-1 or, if not, have
interesting/complex absorption features. The catalog also includes
previously known quasars (mostly from SDSS-I and II) that were
reobserved by BOSS. The catalog contains 297 301 quasars (272 026 are
new discoveries since the beginning of SDSS-III) detected over 9376
deg2 with robust identification and redshift measured by a
combination of principal component eigenspectra. The number of quasars
with z > 2.15 (184 101, of which 167 742 are new discoveries) is
about an order of magnitude greater than the number of z > 2.15
quasars known prior to BOSS. Redshifts and FWHMs are provided for the
strongest emission lines (C iv, C iii], Mg ii). The catalog identifies
29 580 broad absorption line quasars and lists their characteristics.
For each object, the catalog presents five-band (u, g, r, i, z)
CCD-based photometry with typical accuracy of 0.03 mag together with
some information on the optical morphology and the selection criteria.
When available, the catalog also provides information on the optical
variability of quasars using SDSS and Palomar Transient Factory
multi-epoch photometry. The catalog also contains X-ray, ultraviolet,
near-infrared, and radio emission properties of the quasars, when
available, from other large-area surveys. The calibrated digital
spectra, covering the wavelength region 3600-10 500 Å at a
spectral resolution in the range 1300 < R < 2500, can be retrieved
from the SDSS Catalog Archive Server. We also provide a supplemental
list of an additional 4841 quasars that have been identified
serendipitously outside of the superset defined to derive the main
quasar catalog.