Date Published:

January 1, 2016

Abstract:

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), part of the SloanDigital Sky Survey (SDSS) III project, has provided the largest surveyof galaxy redshifts available to date, in terms of both the number ofgalaxy redshifts measured by a single survey, and the effectivecosmological volume covered. Key to analysing the clustering of thesedata to provide cosmological measurements is understanding the detailedproperties of this sample. Potential issues include variations in thetarget catalogue caused by changes either in the targeting algorithm orproperties of the data used, the pattern of spectroscopic observations,the spatial distribution of targets for which redshifts were notobtained, and variations in the target sky density due to observationalsystematics. We document here the target selection algorithms used tocreate the galaxy samples that comprise BOSS. We also present thealgorithms used to create large-scale structure catalogues for the finalData Release (DR12) samples and the associated random catalogues thatquantify the survey mask. The algorithms are an evolution of those usedby the BOSS team to construct catalogues from earlier data, and havebeen designed to accurately quantify the galaxy sample. The code used,designated MKSAMPLE, is released with this paper.

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