External catalogs used in processing

External Catalogs used for Astrometry and Photometry

Several external catalogs are used for astrometric and photometric calibration of DR10. These catalogs are currently availble in the indicated directories at NERSC, although we will soon make them available to the wider public.

Pan-STARRS-1 (PS1)

/global/cfs/cdirs/cosmo/work/ps1/cats/chunks-qz-star-v3
These files were produced by Doug Finkbeiner from proprietary Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) data. The data in the files should be public as of Data Release 1 of PS1. The format of the file names is ps1-<hhhhh>.fits where <hhhhh> corresponds to HEALPixel numbers in the nside=32, NESTED scheme. Each file contains a FITS table of PS1 sources.

Gaia DR2

/global/cfs/cdirs/cosmo/work/gaia/chunks-gaia-dr2-astrom-2
These files contain all sources from the Gaia DR2 public data release, with columns corresponding to the Gaia DR2 data model. The format of the the file names is chunk-<hhhhh>.fits where <hhhhh> corresponds to HEALPixel numbers in the nside=32, NESTED scheme. The provenance of these files is documented at /global/cfs/cdirs/cosmo/work/gaia/chunks-gaia-dr2-astrom-2/README and /global/cfs/cdirs/cosmo/staging/gaia/dr2/README.

Tycho-2

/global/cfs/cdirs/cosmo/staging/tycho2/tycho2.kd.fits
This file corresponds to the Tycho-2 star catalog, produced from the original binary .dat files, and augmented with an isgalaxy column, plus \(J\), \(H\), \(K\) and estimated \(z\) magnitudes. How these extra columns were derived is detailed in /global/cfs/cdirs/cosmo/staging/tycho2/README.

External Catalogs used for Masking

External catalogs are used for masking regions near foreground sources in DR10 (e.g. to construct MASKBITS on the bitmasks page). These catalogs are available in the indicated directories at NERSC and at the listed urls.

"BRIGHT" stars

/global/cfs/cdirs/cosmo/data/legacysurvey/dr10/masking/gaia-mask-dr10.fits.gz
Bright stars are defined from a starting sample of all sources in the Tycho-2 catalog that have MAG_VT < 13. The BRIGHT bit is set for all such Tycho-2 stars. In addition, Gaia DR2 sources with phot_g_mean_mag < 13 have the BRIGHT bit set, provided they do not already match a Tycho-2 source. Gaia and Tycho-2 sources are matched after accounting for proper motion. In the gaia-mask-dr10-near.fits.gz file, bright stars have the isbright column set to True. In the legacypipe code, the radius of the BRIGHT star mask is set by pixels within half of the locus of a hardcoded radius-magnitude relation that is set for all Tycho-2 stars and for Gaia DR2 stars to G < 13. But, note that the specific radii in the gaia-mask-dr10-near.fits.gz do not include the factor-of-two correction (i.e. they are the appropriate radii for the MEDIUM masks, as described below).

"MEDIUM-bright" stars

/global/cfs/cdirs/cosmo/data/legacysurvey/dr10/masking/gaia-mask-dr10.fits.gz
Medium-bright stars are also defined starting with all sources in the Tycho-2 catalog cut to MAG_VT < 13. All such Tycho-2 stars have the MEDIUM bit set. In addition, Gaia DR2 sources with phot_g_mean_mag < 16 (G < 16) have the MEDIUM bit set, provided they do not already match a Tycho-2 source (where the match accounts for proper motion). Note that this means that all BRIGHT stars also have the MEDIUM bit set. The specific radius-magnitude relation used is the same one that is adopted for BRIGHT masks. In the gaia-mask-dr10-near.fits.gz file, medium-bright stars have the ismedium column set to True. Note that, in the legacypipe code, the radius of a BRIGHT mask is half that for a MEDIUM mask for a star of the same magnitude. The radii in the gaia-mask-dr10-near.fits.gz file correspond to the radii for the MEDIUM masks (which is twice the appropriate radius for a BRIGHT mask).

Globular Clusters & Planetary Nebulae

/global/cfs/cdirs/cosmo/data/legacysurvey/dr10/masking/NGC-star-clusters.fits
In DR10, we treat globular clusters and planetary nebulae by turning off source detection (although we do perform forced photometry of Gaia sources) and using the CLUSTER bit to identify the regions of the sky occupied by these systems. We construct our catalog using the following procedure:
  1. First, we select all objects classified as GCl or PN from the OpenNGC catalog of NGC/IC objects. In most cases, we use the published central coordinates and a circular mask with a radius taken from the majax attribute of this catalog; however, we update the radii of 14 of these objects based on visual inspection using the values (in degrees) in the NGC-star-clusters-radii.csv file.

  2. Next, we supplement this catalog with a list of nine additional globular clusters and compact open clusters from a variety of sources from the literature. This supplemental catalog can be found in the star-clusters-supplemental.csv file.

  3. Finally, we add two Local Group galaxies to this catalog, Fornax and Sculptor. We include these objects in this catalog because the normal pipeline led to the detection of tens of millions of additional sources which proved problematic to photometer. Consequently, in the part of the sky occupied by these galaxies DR10 only contains photometry for Gaia point sources.

The final input catalog was built using the build-cluster-catalog.py script and can be found in the legacypipe software product or at the publicly-accessible directory given above. Objects in this mask are given the CLUSTER bit on the bitmasks page.

Large Galaxies

/global/cfs/cdirs/cosmo/data/legacysurvey/dr10/masking/SGA-parent-v3.0.kd.fits and
/global/cfs/cdirs/cosmo/data/legacysurvey/dr10/masking/SGA-ellipse-v3.0.kd.fits
These catalogs are based on the 2020 version of the Siena Galaxy Atlas, SGA-2020. The elliptical geometry listed in the parent catalog was used to mask large galaxies during sky-subtraction, while the elliptical geometry in the ellipse catalog determined where we set the GALAXY MASKBITS bit (see the bitmasks page). Specifically, we use the RA, DEC, DIAM, PA, and BA parameters in these catalogs, as documented in the SGA-2020.fits data model.

Additional Masking

Additionally, DR10 processing bypassed the densest regions of the Large Magellanic Cloud and Small Magellanic Cloud (effectively, we "cut holes" around the LMC and SMC). The result is that bricks in the central regions of the LMC and SMC are simply missing from DR10.