Date Published:
November 1, 2015
Abstract:
The SDSS-III/Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment(APOGEE) survey operated from 2011-2014 using the APOGEEspectrograph, which collects high-resolution (R ˜ 22,500), near-IR(1.51-1.70 μm) spectra with a multiplexing (300 fiber-fedobjects) capability. We describe the survey data products that arepublicly available, which include catalogs with radial velocity, stellarparameters, and 15 elemental abundances for over 150,000 stars, as wellas the more than 500,000 spectra from which these quantities arederived. Calibration relations for the stellar parameters({T}
{eff}, {log} g, [M/H], [α/M]) and abundances (C, N,O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, S, K, Ca, Ti, V, Mn, Fe, Ni) are presented anddiscussed. The internal scatter of the abundances within clustersindicates that abundance precision is generally between 0.05 and 0.09dex across a broad temperature range; it is smaller for some elementalabundances within more limited ranges and at high signal-to-noise ratio.We assess the accuracy of the abundances using comparison of meancluster metallicities with literature values, APOGEE observations of thesolar spectrum and of Arcturus, comparison of individual star abundanceswith other measurements, and consideration of the locus of derivedparameters and abundances of the entire sample, and find that it ischallenging to determine the absolute abundance scale; external accuracymay be good to 0.1-0.2 dex. Uncertainties may be larger at coolertemperatures ({T}
{eff} \lt 4000 {{K}}). Access to thepublic data release and data products is described, and some guidancefor using the data products is provided.
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