The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey: Search Algorithm and Follow-up Observations
Abstract
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey has identified a large number of new transient sources in a 300 sq. deg. region along the celestial equator during its first two seasons of a three-season campaign. Multi-band (ugriz) light curves were measured for most of the sources, which include solar system objects, Galactic variable stars, active galactic nuclei, supernovae (SNe), and other astronomical transients. The imaging survey is augmented by an extensive spectroscopic follow-up program to identify SNe, measure their redshifts, and study the physical conditions of the explosions and their environment through spectroscopic diagnostics. During the survey, light curves are rapidly evaluated to provide an initial photometric type of the SNe, and a selected sample of sources are targeted for spectroscopic observations. In the first two seasons, 476 sources were selected for spectroscopic observations, of which 403 were identified as SNe. For the Type Ia SNe, the main driver for the Survey, our photometric typing and targeting efficiency is 90%. Only 6% of the photometric SN Ia candidates were spectroscopically classified as non-SN Ia instead, and the remaining 4% resulted in low signal-to-noise, unclassified spectra. This paper describes the search algorithm and the software, and the real-time processing of the SDSS imaging data. We also present the details of the supernova candidate selection procedures and strategies for follow-up spectroscopic and imaging observations of the discovered sources.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0708.2750,
title = {The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey: Search Algorithm and Follow-up Observations},
author = {Masao Sako and B. Bassett and A. Becker and D. Cinabro and F. DeJongh and D. L. Depoy and B. Dilday and M. Doi and J. A. Frieman and P. M. Garnavich and C. J. Hogan and J. Holtzman and S. Jha and R. Kessler and K. Konishi and H. Lampeitl and J. Marriner and G. Miknaitis and R. C. Nichol and J. L. Prieto and A. G. Riess and M. W. Richmond and R. Romani and D. P. Schneider and M. Smith and M. SubbaRao and N. Takanashi and K. Tokita and K. van der Heyden and N. Yasuda and C. Zheng and J. Barentine and H. Brewington and C. Choi and J. Dembicky and M. Harnavek and Y. Ihara and M. Im and W. Ketzeback and S. J. Kleinman and J. Krzesiński and D. C. Long and E. Malanushenko and V. Malanushenko and R. J. McMillan and T. Morokuma and A. Nitta and K. Pan and G. Saurage and S. A. Snedden},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0708.2750},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal (66 pages, 13 figures); typos corrected