The BOSS Lyα Forest Sample from SDSS Data Release 9

Citation:

Lee K-G, Bailey S, Bartsch LE, Carithers W, Dawson KS, Kirkby D, Lundgren B, Margala D, Palanque-Delabrouille N, Pieri MM, et al. The BOSS Lyα Forest Sample from SDSS Data Release 9. The Astronomical Journal. 2013;145 :69.

Date Published:

March 1, 2013

Abstract:

We present the BOSS Lyman-α (Lyα) Forest Sample from SDSSData Release 9, comprising 54,468 quasar spectra with z qso> 2.15 suitable for Lyα forest analysis. This data set probesthe intergalactic medium with absorption redshifts 2.0 < zα < 5.7 over an area of 3275 deg2, andencompasses an approximate comoving volume of 20 h -3Gpc3. With each spectrum, we have included several productsdesigned to aid in Lyα forest analysis: improved sky masks thatflag pixels where data may be unreliable, corrections for known biasesin the pipeline estimated noise, masks for the cores of damped Lyαsystems and corrections for their wings, and estimates of the unabsorbedcontinua so that the observed flux can be converted to a fractionaltransmission. The continua are derived using a principal component fitto the quasar spectrum redward of rest-frame Lyα (λ >1216 Å), extrapolated into the forest region and normalized by alinear function to fit the expected evolution of the Lyα forest

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