SEGUE: A spectroscopic survey of 240,000 stars with g = 14-20

Brian Yanny, Constance Rockosi, Heidi Jo Newberg, Gillian R. Knapp, Jennifer K. Adelman-McCarthy, Bonnie Alcorn, Sahar Allam, Carlos Allende Prieto, Deokkeun An, Kurt S.J. Anderson, Scott Anderson, Coryn A.L. Bailer-Jones, Steve Bastian, Timothy C. Beers, Eric Bell, Vasily Belokurov, Dmitry Bizyaev, Norm Blythe, John J. Bochanski, William N. BoroskiJarle Brinchmann, J. Brinkmann, Howard Brewington, Larry Carey, Kyle M. Cudworth, Michael Evans, N. W. Evans, Evalyn Gates, B. T. Gänsicke, Bruce Gillespie, Gerald Gilmore, Ada Nebot Gomez-Moran, Eva K. Grebel, Jim Greenwell, James E. Gunn, Cathy Jordan, Wendell Jordan, Paul Harding, Hugh Harris, John S. Hendry, Diana Holder, Inese I. Ivans, Željko Ivezič, Sebastian Jester, Jennifer A. Johnson, Stephen M. Kent, Scot Kleinman, Alexei Kniazev, Jurek Krzesinski, Richard Kron, Nikolay Kuropatkin, Svetlana Lebedeva, Young Sun Lee, R. French Leger, Sébastien Lépine, Steve Levine, Huan Lin, Daniel C. Long, Craig Loomis, Robert Lupton, Olena Malanushenko, Viktor Malanushenko, Bruce Margon, David Martinez-Delgado, Peregrine McGehee, Dave Monet, Heather L. Morrison, Jeffrey A. Munn, Eric H. Neilsen, Atsuko Nitta, John E. Norris, Dan Oravetz, Russell Owen, Nikhil Padmanabhan, Kaike Pan, R. S. Peterson, Jeffrey R. Pier, Jared Platson, Paola Re Fiorentin, Gordon T. Richards, Hans Walter Rix, David J. Schlegel, Donald P. Schneider, Matthias R. Schreiber, Axel Schwope, Valena Sibley, Audrey Simmons, Stephanie A. Snedden, J. Allyn Smith, Larry Stark, Fritz Stauffer, M. Steinmetz, C. Stoughton, Mark SubbaRao, Alex Szalay, Paula Szkody, Aniruddha R. Thakar, Sivarani Thirupathi, Douglas Tucker, Alan Uomoto, Dan Vanden Berk, Simon Vidrih, Yogesh Wadadekar, Shannon Watters, Ron Wilhelm, Rosemary F.G. Wyse, Jean Yarger, Dan Zucker

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

956 Scopus citations

Abstract

The Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE) Survey obtained ≈240,000 moderate-resolution (R ∼ 1800) spectra from 3900 Å to 9000 Å of fainter Milky Way stars (14.0 < g < 20.3) of a wide variety of spectral types, both main-sequence and evolved objects, with the goal of studying the kinematics and populations of our Galaxy and its halo. The spectra are clustered in 212 regions spaced over three quarters of the sky. Radial velocity accuracies for stars are at g < 18, degrading to at g ∼ 20. For stars with signal-to-noise ratio >10 per resolution element, stellar atmospheric parameters are estimated, including metallicity, surface gravity, and effective temperature. SEGUE obtained 3500 deg2 of additional ugriz imaging (primarily at low Galactic latitudes) providing precise multicolor photometry (σ(g, r, i) ∼ 2%), (σ(u, z) ∼ 3%) and astrometry (≈0″.1) for spectroscopic target selection. The stellar spectra, imaging data, and derived parameter catalogs for this survey are publicly available as part of Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)4377-4399
Number of pages23
JournalAstronomical Journal
Volume137
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2009

Keywords

  • Galaxy: halo
  • Galaxy: stellar content
  • Galaxy: structure
  • stars: abundances
  • stars: fundamental parameters
  • stars: general

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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