We outline the design of the dark nights portion of the LAMOST Pilot Survey, which began observations in 2011 October. In particular, we focus on Milky Way stellar candidates that are targeted for the LEGUE (LAMOST E...We outline the design of the dark nights portion of the LAMOST Pilot Survey, which began observations in 2011 October. In particular, we focus on Milky Way stellar candidates that are targeted for the LEGUE (LAMOST Experiment for Galactic Understanding and Exploration) survey. We discuss the regions of sky in which spectroscopic candidates were selected, and the motivations for selecting each of these sky areas. Some limitations due to the unique design of the telescope are discussed, including the requirement that a bright (V 〈 8) star be placed at the center of each plate for wavefront sensing and active optics corrections. The target selection categories and scientific goals motivating them are briefly discussed, followed by a detailed overview of how these selection functions were implemented. We illustrate the difference between the overall input catalog - Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) photometry - and the final targets selected for LAMOST observations.展开更多
基金partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos. 10573022, 10973015 and 11061120454)the US National Science Foundation through AST grant 09-37523The Chinese Academy of Sciences is acknowledged for providing the initial support through grant GJHZ 200812
文摘We outline the design of the dark nights portion of the LAMOST Pilot Survey, which began observations in 2011 October. In particular, we focus on Milky Way stellar candidates that are targeted for the LEGUE (LAMOST Experiment for Galactic Understanding and Exploration) survey. We discuss the regions of sky in which spectroscopic candidates were selected, and the motivations for selecting each of these sky areas. Some limitations due to the unique design of the telescope are discussed, including the requirement that a bright (V 〈 8) star be placed at the center of each plate for wavefront sensing and active optics corrections. The target selection categories and scientific goals motivating them are briefly discussed, followed by a detailed overview of how these selection functions were implemented. We illustrate the difference between the overall input catalog - Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) photometry - and the final targets selected for LAMOST observations.