BOSS Ancillary Targets

SDSS data for ancillary targets are available in the same manner as for any other objects. Data for individual objects can be found using the SkyServer Navigate and Explore tools. Spectroscopic catalog data for multiple targets can be retrieved using SkyServer search tools or the CasJobs batch interface. Spectrum files can be downloaded in multiple formats from the Science Archive Server Advanced Search.

For all SDSS spectroscopic data, information about how that object was targeted for spectroscopy is included in the object’s Target Flags. Information about whether a target was selected for one or more ancillary target programs is included in the flags ANCILLARY_TARGET1 and ANCILLARY_TARGET2. All new ancillary target programs in Data Release 12 use the ANCILLARY_TARGET2 flag.

To store targeting data most efficiently, all SDSS target flags are stored as bitmasks. For more information about working with such data, see the SDSS bitmasks page. To enable searches by flag name rather than by bit value, SkyServer and CasJobs include the lookup functions dbo.fAncillaryTarget1 and dbo.fAncillaryTarget2.

This page describes how to use SDSS ancillary targets in general; the pages linked from the lists below describe how targets were selected for specific ancillary targeting programs.

BOSS Ancillary targets were requested in three calls for proposals made to the SDSS-III collaboration: one in 2009, one in 2010, and one in 2012. Throughout SDSS observations from 2009 to 2012, ancillary targets were given a lower priority for target selection than the primary science drivers of BOSS; therefore, sample selection for the ancillary target programs is often not complete.

The SDSS photometry used for selection in these different programs typically uses PSF, model (for galaxy magnitudes), or cmodel (for galaxy colors; Abazajian et al. 2004) photometry, all corrected for Galactic extinction following Schlegel, Finkbeiner, & Davis (1998).

Occasionally, fiber magnitudes are also used. The selection for many programs also uses photometry from the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE, Wright et al. 2010). For convenience of the user, we provide a copy of the WISE catalog in both the DR11 and DR12 contexts in the CAS database, in the tables WISE_allsky and WISE_xmatch.

WISE carried out a full-sky survey in four bands, centered at 3.6, 4.5, 12, and 22m; the resulting photometry (which is reported on a Vega system, unlike the AB system of SDSS) is referred to as W1, W2, W3, and W4, respectively. A number of programs use a reprocessing of the WISE data (Lang 2014) or forced photometry of WISE images at positions from SDSS (Lang, Hogg, & Schlegel 2014).

The tables below gives summary statistics for each of the parallel (shared-plate) BOSS ancillary target programs that were contained entirely in the Stripe 82 survey area. Data from these programs were originally released in Data Release 9. For more information about each program, including detailed target selection information, click on the name of the program in the table below. These programs are described in the literature in Dawson et al. 2013.

Targeting data for the Stripe 82 programs are stored in both the ANCILLARY_TARGET1 and ANCILLARY_TARGET2 columns, depending on the program. The tables below give information about each program, including the bit numbers in which target flags are recorded.

ANCILLARY_TARGET1

The first table shows programs whose target flags are recorded in ANCILLARY_TARGET1 values:

Program	Description	Spectra	Unique primary objects
The Transient Universe through Stripe 82	Spectra of a variety of variable objects in a 220-square-degree section of the repeated imaging of SDSS stripe 82	404	348
Host Galaxies of SDSS-II Supernovae	Spectra of host galaxies of supernovae that were identified by the 2005-2008 SDSS supernova survey	4,729	3,528
High-Quality Galaxy Spectra	Repeat observations of two spectroscopic plates, leading to higher signal-to-noise spectra for 2,000 luminous red galaxies	14,000	2,000
Reddened Quasars	A search for quasars reddened by dust absorption (either from intervening sources or sources local to the quasar) in the 220-square-degree survey area of Stripe 82	126	54

ANCILLARY_TARGET2

This table shows programs whose target flags are recorded in ANCILLARY_TARGET2 values.

Program	Description	Spectra	Unique Primary Objects
Brightest Cluster Galaxies	Spectra of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in the 220-square-degree stripe 82 survey area	1,407	1,302
No Quasar Left Behind	An attempt to find all likely quasars in the 220-square-degree footprint of SDSS Stripe 82, selecting based only on variable source light curve data	1,510	1,394
Variability-Selected Quasars	Candidate quasars in the 220-square-degree footprint of Stripe 82, selected by variability alone	639	607
K-Band Selected Sample of Quasars	Quasar candidates in the 220-square-degree footprint of Stripe 82 that were selected by matching SDSS and UKIDSS photometry	192	178

The table below gives summary statistics for each of the parallel (shared-plate) ancillary target programs over the entire BOSS survey area (spectroscopic effective area 9,376 deg²). For more information about each program, including detailed target selection information, click on the name of the program.

The ancillary target programs whose flag data are stored in ANCILLARY_TARGET1, as well as the first two programs from ANCILLARY_TARGET2 are described in the literature in Dawson et al. 2013. The rest of the programs in ANCILLARY_TARGET2 are described in Alam et al. 2015.

ANCILLARY_TARGET1

The first table shows programs whose target flags are recorded in ANCILLARY_TARGET1 values:

Program	Description	Spectra	Unique primary objects
Very Low-Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs	A search for M stars and L dwarfs in the BOSS survey area (9,376 square degrees)	6,308	5,425
Low-Mass Binary Stars	Spectra for widely-separated binary stars of spectral class M	1,229	1,115
White Dwarfs and Hot Subdwarf Stars	Spectra of white dwarf candidates in the SDSS Data Release 7 imaging area (7,430 deg2)	8,938	7,951
Distant Halo Giant Stars	Spectra of class K giant stars in the outer halo of the Milky Way	10,540	7,522
Bright Galaxies	A search for bright galaxies that were missed by prior SDSS spectroscopic surveys	5,616	5,275
High Energy Blazars and Optical Counterparts of Gamma-ray Sources	A search for the optical counterparts of Fermi gamma-ray sources in a the SDSS Data Release 7 survey area (7,650 square degrees)	484	449
An X-Ray View of Star-Formation and Accretion in Normal Galaxies	Spectra for the optical counterparts of Chandra x-ray targets in the SDSS DR7 survey area	1,367	1,272
Remarkable X-Ray Source Populations	Spectra of the optical counterparts of serendipitous x-ray sources identified by XMM-Newton and/or Chandra	2,764	2,555
Star-Forming Radio Galaxies	Spectra of blue star-forming galaxies with radio emission for studies of gas cooling and radio feedback	2,938	2,783
Galaxies Near SDSS Quasar Sight Lines	Spectra of galaxies in the SDSS Data Release 7 imaging area (7,650 deg2) which are close on the sky to known quasars, meaning that they lie along the quasar’s line-of-sight	2,040	1,945
Luminous Blue Galaxies at 0.7 < z < 1.7	Spectra of a sample of luminous blue galaxies at 0.7 < z < 1.7 in a 143-square-degree subset of the BOSS survey area	3,661	3,516
Broad Absorption Line (BAL) Quasar Variability Survey	Spectra for broad absorption lines (BAL) quasars in a 5,740 deg2 survey area	1,803	1,450
Variable Quasar Narrow-line Absorption	Spectra of narrow absorption line quasars in a 7,650 square degree survey area	2,275	2,068
High-Redshift Quasars	Spectra of candidate high-redshift quasars identified from SDSS imaging. Separate target selection was carried out in the 220 deg2 footprint of SDSS Stripe 82 and in the 7,650 deg2 area of DR7 imaging	4,291	4,141

ANCILLARY_TARGET2

Targeting data for each of these programs is stored in the ANCILLARY_TARGET2 column. The bit number values in the table below give the bit number of ANCILLARY_TARGET2 in which that targeting flag is recorded.

Program	Description	Spectra	Unique primary objects
Double-lobed Radio Quasars	Spectra of point-source objects near the midpoint of a double-lobed radio quasar in FIRST	1,196	1,133
High-Redshift Quasars from SDSS and UKIDSS	Spectra of candidate high-redshift quasars seen by both the SDSS and the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey	121	109
Characterizing Low-mass M Dwarfs Using Wide Binaries	Spectra of candidate binary star pairs in which one star is an M dwarf, obtained to help better characterize the ages and metallicities of M dwarfs	95	93
A Census of Nearby Galaxies	Spectroscopic observations of nearby galaxies identified in Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) imaging, taken with the goal of completing a census of the local universe	178	173
Quasar Spectrophotometric Calibration	An ancillary target program undertaken to improve the spectrophotometric calibration of BOSS quasars, by targeting standard stars with similar focal plane offsets to BOSS quasar observations	1,782	1,458
Spectra of H2O Maser Galaxies	Spectra of H2O maser galaxies obtained with the goal of calibrating Cepheid distances, and therefore improving estimates of H0	54	50
Spectroscopy of Massive Galaxy Cluster Members	Spectra obtained to find spectroscopic redshifts of massive galaxy clusters selected in x-ray imaging, with the goal of finding the three-dimensional structure of those clusters	2,823	2,757
Repeated Spectroscopy of Candidate Close Binary Massive Black Holes	Second-epoch spectroscopy of SDSS-I/II quasars that are candidate massive black hole binaries with separations less than one parsec, selected to improve our understanding of close black hole pairs	100	90
Spectroscopy of Hard X-ray Identified AGN	Spectra of hard-x-ray selected AGN from XMM, selected to help constrain the dark matter halo masses of X-ray AGN as a function of redshift and luminosity	25	25
“WISE BOSS”: BOSS spectra of Mid-IR bright AGN	Spectra of quasars selected from the WISE All-Sky Survey, selected to study the completeness of the BOSS main quasar sample and to enable studies of the dust obscuration of quasars	21,647	20,894
Quasar Target Selection with WISE	Spectra measured with the goal of enhancing the efficiency of quasar identification in SDSS	29,075	26,932
Quasar Pairs	Spectra of closely-separated quasars, taken to provide a large statistical sample of quasar pairs for studies of small-scale quasar clustering	645	628

Because BOSS observations were proceeding ahead of schedule in 2012, a series of spectroscopic plates were added to the SDSS-III program to observe additional ancillary science programs. These plates do not have primary BOSS galaxy and quasar targets; instead, they consist entirely of ancillary science targets. The completeness of each dedicated sample is therefore typically higher than the completeness of the samples in the parallel ancillary programs listed above.

This section describes each of these dedicated-plate ancillary science program, again sorted roughly by the distance to the targets. Note that a number of the programs include multiple target classes, each indicated by a separate bit. See the individual program pages for descriptions of each bit. For a table of bit values, see the DR12 Bitmasks page.

Program	Description	Spectra	Unique Primary Objects	Plates
Star Formation in the Orion and Taurus Molecular Clouds	A program to collect spectra of candidate young stellar objects (YSOs) in the Orion and Taurus molecular clouds first seen in 2MASS, Spitzer, and WISE imaging	4,679	3,945	7261
Stars Across the SDSS	A spectroscopic survey designed to derive stellar parameters for stars seen in multiple SDSS surveys using consistent methods	13,082	12,930	7330-7333 7450-7453
A Galaxy Sample Free of Fiber Collisions	Galaxies that had previously been missed from CMASS and LOWZ target selection due to fiber collisions were observed as part of this ancillary target program	(See program page)		6373-6398 6780-6782 6369 6717
Quantifying BOSS Galaxy Incompleteness With a WISE-Selected Sample	Spectra of galaxies with a wider range of colors than those selected in the CMASS sample	10,157	9,153	6373-6398
Exploring z > 0.6 LRGs from SDSS and WISE	A spectroscopic survey of distant (z > 0.6) luminous red galaxies (LRGs) selected using WISE photometry, with the goal of better calibrating photometric redshifts of these galaxies, and therefore improving distance estimates	13,454	10,851	6373-6398
Tests of eBOSS Target Selection in CFHT-LS W3 Field	A survey designed to improve target selection of galaxies and quasars for the future eBOSS survey of SDSS-IV	5,068	4,202	7027-7032
eBOSS ELG Target Selection with Deep Photometry	Photometry deeper than SDSS was used to assess algorithms for selection of Emission Line Galaxies (ELG) for spectroscopic observations	2,699	2,590	6391-6933
The TDSS/SPIDERS/eBOSS Pilot Survey	A pilot survey designed to find targets in optical and x-ray imaging useful for planning future phases of the SDSS	1,705	1,465	6369 6783
Follow-up spectroscopy of wide-area XMM Fields	A spectroscopic survey of AGN, selected from X-ray data, conducted to better characterize AGN population properties	3,113	3,051	7235-7238
Multi-Object Reverberation Mapping	A multi-epoch spectroscopic survey designed to enable use of the reverberation mapping technique to study the structure of broad-line regions in AGN and quasars	25,470	839	7338-7340
Variability-selected Quasars at 1 < z < 4 to g = 22.5	Spectra of quasars in SDSS stripe 82, selected by color and variability	9,084	2,400	6370 6780-6782
Faint End of the Quasar Luminosity Function	A survey of quasars designed to extend BOSS quasar selection to include fainter quasars	3,600	2,652	7334-7337
SDSS-III Observations of LOFAR Sources	This ancillary program was intended to target radio sources identified in deep LOFAR observations of the ELAIS-N1 region	2,210	2,119	7562-7565

SEQUELS covers several hundred square degrees within the BOSS footprint, targeting LRGs, QSOs, and emission line galaxies (ELGs). SEQUELS serves both as a pilot program for the eBOSS survey of SDSS-IV and as a stand-alone science program.

For details on target selection in SEQUELS, see the SEQUELS Ancillary Target page.