Abstract
Abstract The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) began observations in 2014 July. It pursues three core programs: the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2), Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA), and the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS). As well as its core program, eBOSS contains two major subprograms: the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS) and the SPectroscopic IDentification of ERosita Sources (SPIDERS). This paper describes the first data release from SDSS-IV, Data Release 13 (DR13). DR13 makes publicly available the first 1390 spatially resolved integral field unit observations of nearby galaxies from MaNGA. It includes new observations from eBOSS, completing the Sloan Extended QUasar, Emission-line galaxy, Luminous red galaxy Survey (SEQUELS), which also targeted variability-selected objects and X-ray-selected objects. DR13 includes new reductions of the SDSS-III BOSS data, improving the spectrophotometric calibration and redshift classification, and new reductions of the SDSS-III APOGEE-1 data, improving stellar parameters for dwarf stars and cooler stars. DR13 provides more robust and precise photometric calibrations. Value-added target catalogs relevant for eBOSS, TDSS, and SPIDERS and an updated red-clump catalog for APOGEE are also available. This paper describes the location and format of the data and provides references to important technical papers. The SDSS web site, http://www.sdss.org, provides links to the data, tutorials, examples of data access, and extensive documentation of the reduction and analysis procedures. DR13 is the first of a scheduled set that will contain new data and analyses from the planned ∼6 yr operations of SDSS-IV.
Highlights
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has been observing the universe using the 2.5 m Sloan Foundation Telescope (Gunn et al 2006) at Apache Point Observatory (APO) for over 15 yr
Science results from the SAMI survey so far include characterizing the galactic winds or extended diffuse ionizing gas in edge-on disk galaxies (Ho et al 2016), mapping the quenching of star formation proceeding from the outside in in dense environments (Schaefer et al 2017), and identifying stellar mass as the main variable affecting the fraction of early-type galaxies (ETGs) that are slow rotators (Brough et al 2017)
The catalogs of photometric, spectroscopic, and derived quantities are available through the Catalog Archive Server or CAS (Thakar et al 2008; Thakar 2008) via two primary modes of access: browser-based queries of the database are available through the SkyServer Web application in synchronous mode, and more advanced and extensive querying capabilities are available through CasJobs in asynchronous or batch mode that allows timeconsuming queries to be run in the background (Li & Thakar 2008)
Summary
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has been observing the universe using the 2.5 m Sloan Foundation Telescope (Gunn et al 2006) at Apache Point Observatory (APO) for over 15 yr. The MaNGA (Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO) survey studies galaxy formation and evolution across a wide range of masses and morphological types by observing a substantial portion of the optical spatial extent of ∼104 galaxies (Bundy et al 2015) It accomplishes this goal by employing 17 bundles ranging in size between 19 and 127 fibers to cover targets selected from an extended version of the NASA-Sloan Atlas129 and 12 bundles of seven fibers for calibration stars. The clustering from eBOSS tracers will allow new measurements of redshift-space distortions (RSDs), non-Gaussianity in the primordial density field, and the summed mass of neutrino species Observing these redshift ranges for the first time in SDSS required re-evaluation of targeting strategies. These technical papers and the SDSS web site (http://www.sdss.org) contain critical information about these data, which here is only summarized
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