Improved Spectrophotometric Calibration of the SDSS-III BOSS Quasar Sample

Daniel Margala; David Kirkby; Kyle Dawson; Stephen Bailey; Michael Blanton; Donald P. Schneider

doi:10.3847/0004-637X/831/2/157

Improved Spectrophotometric Calibration of the SDSS-III BOSS Quasar Sample

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2016-11-15 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Authors: Daniel Margala , David Kirkby , Kyle Dawson , Stephen Bailey , Michael Blanton , Donald P. Schneider

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Abstract

We present a model for spectrophotometric calibration errors in observations of quasars from the third generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) and describe the correction procedure we have developed and applied to this sample. Calibration errors are primarily due to atmospheric differential refraction and guiding offsets during each exposure. The corrections potentially reduce the systematics for any studies of BOSS quasars, including the measurement of baryon acoustic oscillations using the Lyman- $\alpha$ forest. Our model suggests that, on average, the observed quasar flux in BOSS is overestimated by $\sim 19\%$ at 3600 \AA\ and underestimated by $\sim 24\%$ at 10,000 \AA. Our corrections for the entire BOSS quasar sample are publicly available.

Keywords

spectrophotometric calibration SDSS-III BOSS quasar baryon acoustic oscillations Lyman-alpha forest differential refraction systematic errors

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@article{arxiv.1506.04790,
  title  = {Improved Spectrophotometric Calibration of the SDSS-III BOSS Quasar Sample},
  author = {Daniel Margala and David Kirkby and Kyle Dawson and Stephen Bailey and Michael Blanton and Donald P. Schneider},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.04790},
  year   = {2016}
}

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10 pages, 15 figures

Improved Spectrophotometric Calibration of the SDSS-III BOSS Quasar Sample

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