The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Technical Overview

Citation:

Shen Y, Brandt WN, Dawson KS, Hall PB, McGreer ID, Anderson SF, Chen Y, Denney KD, Eftekharzadeh S, Fan X, et al. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Technical Overview. The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. 2015;216 :4.

Date Published:

January 1, 2015

Abstract:

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping (SDSS-RM) project isa dedicated multi-object RM experiment that has spectroscopicallymonitored a sample of 849 broad-line quasars in a single 7deg2 field with the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation SpectroscopicSurvey spectrograph. The RM quasar sample is flux-limited to ipsf = 21.7 mag, and covers a redshift range of 0.1 < z< 4.5 without any other cuts on quasar properties. Opticalspectroscopy was performed during 2014 January-July dark/gray time, withan average cadence of ~4 days, totaling more than 30 epochs. Supportingphotometric monitoring in the g and i bands was conducted at multiplefacilities including the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) and theSteward Observatory Bok telescope in 2014, with a cadence of ~2 days andcovering all lunar phases. The RM field (R.A., decl. = 14:14:49.00,+53:05:00.0) lies within the CFHT-LS W3 field, and coincides with thePan-STARRS 1 (PS1) Medium Deep Field MD07, with three prior years ofmulti-band PS1 light curves. The SDSS-RM six month baseline program aimsto detect time lags between the quasar continuum and broad line region(BLR) variability on timescales of up to several months (in the observed

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