# eBOSS ELG target selection

## Contact

Anand Raichoor
EPFL, Lausanne, Swizterland
anand.raichoor@epfl.ch
Johan Comparat
MPE/MPG, Munich, Germany
comparat@mpe.mpg.de

## Summary

ELGs are selected to cover the redshift range $0.7 \lt z \lt 1.1$. The DECaLS photometry was used to draw the targets for spectroscopic observations.

The ELG selection is fully described in Raichoor et al 2017 and Comparat et al. 2016.

In DR14 we release only the targets for the SGC. Redshifts and targets for the NGC will come in next releases.

## Description

The DECam Legacy Survey (DECaLS; co-P.I.s: A.Dey and D.J.Schlegel) is an on-going imaging survey covering 6700 deg$^2$ of the extragalactic sky that lies in the region $-20^\circ \lt Dec. \lt +30^\circ$ to depths of $g=24.7$, $r=23.9$, and $z=23.0$ mag (5$\sigma$ point-source).
In addition, the DECaLS program also processes any public DECam observations in the DESI footprint, the largest component being the DES survey.

The DECaLS data and processing pipeline are public, with a release every six months. The footprint of the eBOSS ELG program is shown on Figure 1.

#### Figure 1

Survey footprints: eBOSS/ELG footprint (black lines; SGC is on the left, NGC is on the right), SDSS/BOSS footprint (light green shaded regions), DES footprint (blue hatched), and DECaLS/DR3 regions with $grz$-imaging (orange dots).

The target selection algorithm is completely described in the Table 1 below.

#### Table 1

eBOSS/ELG target selection over the SGC and the NGC footprints.
The reported densities are computed with the plate covered areas (i.e. not accounting for the masked regions).
The DECaLS catalogue quantities BRICK_PRIMARY, decam_anymask, and tycho2inblob are described here: http://legacysurvey.org/dr3/catalogs/.
$^\dagger$: this custom mask is used because of a bug in the target selection scripts, and is relevant for the chunk eboss23 only.

#### Figure 2

Compilation of the SDSS BAO surveys in the Fat Stripe 82.
The LRG program from SDSS I-II is in green.
The LOWZ, CMASS, and Lyman-alpha programs from BOSS are in pink, yellow, and brown, respectively.
The LRG, ELG, QSO+Lyman-alpha programs from eBOSS are in red, blue, and gray, respectively; for eBOSS, we report the data observed between 2014 and 2016.
For BOSS and eBOSS, the density in the $0\lt R.A.\lt 45$ is higher than in $-45\lt RA\lt 0$, because the included range in declination is higher ($-5\lt Dec\lt 5$ vs. $-2\lt Dec\lt 2$).
Top panel: sector view of observed targets.
Bottom panel: Universe rate of expansion as a function of redshift, along with the redshift range used for each tracer for the BAO measurement.

A representation of how the ELG sample is positioned compared to other cosmological samples is shown in Figure 2. It is a typical pie plot showing how the ELGs probe the turn in the Hubble distance.

The catalogs of targets in the SGC is released as a value-added catalog within the SDSS DR14..

The software to select the ELGs from the DECaLS catalogs is available here through the svn.

The software to measure emission line and add redshift quality flags to the ELGs is available through here via the svn.