The Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasar catalog: ninth data release^⋆

¹ UPMC-CNRS, UMR 7095, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, 75014 Paris, France
e-mail: paris@iap.fr
² Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Casilla 36-D, Santiago, Chile
³ APC, Astroparticule et Cosmologie, Université Paris Diderot, CNRS/IN2P3, CEA/Irfu, Observatoire de Paris, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 10 rue Alice Domon & Léonie Duquet, 75205 Paris Cedex 13, France
⁴ Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, 1 Cyclotron Rd, Berkeley CA, 94720, USA
⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA
⁶ Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
⁷ Princeton University Observatory, Peyton Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
⁸ University of Washington, Dept. of Astronomy, Box 351580, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
⁹ Institut de Ciències del Cosmos (IEEC/UB), Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
¹⁰ Apache Point Observatory, PO Box 59, Sunspot, NM 88349-0059, USA
¹¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, UT, USA
¹² Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein Drive, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
¹³ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
¹⁴ Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
¹⁵ Department of Astronomy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-2055, USA
¹⁶ School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
¹⁷ Carnegie Mellon University, Physics Department, 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
¹⁸ CEA, Centre de Saclay, Irfu/SPP, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
¹⁹ Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St., MS#20, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
²⁰ Department of Astronomy, Yale University, New Haven, CT06511, USA
²¹ Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
²² Faculty of Sciences, Department of Astronomy and Space Sciences, Erciyes University, 38039 Kayseri, Turkey
²³ Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Zurich, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland
²⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, York University, Toronto, ON M3J1P3, Canada
²⁵ Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, Department of Physics, New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA
²⁶ National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 520 Edgemont Rd., Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA
²⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, UC Irvine, 4129 Frederick Reines Hall, Irvine, CA 92697-4575, USA
²⁸ Department of Astrophysical sciences, Princeton university, Princeton 08544, USA
²⁹ Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth, Dennis Sciama building, Portsmouth P01 3FX, UK
³⁰ Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK
³¹ Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, Catalonia, Spain
³² Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, Department of Physics, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA
³³ Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), 38200 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
³⁴ Departamento de Astrofisica, Universidad de La Laguna (ULL), 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
³⁵ Department of Physics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
³⁶ 5 Brookhaven National Laboratory, Blgd 510, Upton, NY 11375, USA
³⁷ Department of Physics, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
³⁸ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, via G.B. Tiepolo 11, Trieste, Italy
³⁹ INFN/National Institute for Nuclear Physics, via Valerio 2, 34127 Trieste, Italy
⁴⁰ Astronomy Department and Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics, Ohio State University, 140 West 18th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
⁴¹ PITT PACC, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA

Received: 31 July 2012
Accepted: 7 October 2012

Abstract

We present the Data Release 9 Quasar (DR9Q) catalog from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. The catalog includes all BOSS objects that were targeted as quasar candidates during the survey, are spectrocopically confirmed as quasars via visual inspection, have luminosities M_i[z = 2] < −20.5 (in a ΛCDM cosmology with H₀ = 70 km s^-1 Mpc^-1, Ω_M = 0.3, and Ω_Λ = 0.7) and either display at least one emission line with full width at half maximum (FWHM) larger than 500 km s^-1 or, if not, have interesting/complex absorption features. It includes as well, known quasars (mostly from SDSS-I and II) that were reobserved by BOSS. This catalog contains 87 822 quasars (78 086 are new discoveries) detected over 3275 deg² with robust identification and redshift measured by a combination of principal component eigenspectra newly derived from a training set of 8632 spectra from SDSS-DR7. The number of quasars with z > 2.15 (61 931) is ~2.8 times larger than the number of z > 2.15 quasars previously known. Redshifts and FWHMs are provided for the strongest emission lines (C iv, C iii], Mg ii). The catalog identifies 7533 broad absorption line quasars and gives their characteristics. For each object the catalog presents five-band (u, g, r, i, z) CCD-based photometry with typical accuracy of 0.03 mag, and information on the morphology and selection method. The catalog also contains X-ray, ultraviolet, near-infrared, and radio emission properties of the quasars, when available, from other large-area surveys. The calibrated digital spectra cover the wavelength region 3600−10 500 Å at a spectral resolution in the range 1300 < R < 2500; the spectra can be retrieved from the SDSS Catalog Archive Server. We also provide a supplemental list of an additional 949 quasars that have been identified, among galaxy targets of the BOSS or among quasar targets after DR9 was frozen.