Quality of stellar radial velocities
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Spectra for approximately 48,000 Galactic stars of all common
spectral types are available with DR2. Radial velocities (RVs) are
stored as redshifts (multiply z by the speed of light to get the RV in
km/s) and were measured by cross-correlation to a set of stellar
templates. Also tablulated are measures of individual common spectral
absorption and emission lines, such as Ca II K (3933), the Balmer
series of Hydrogen, and Na (5896), and the offsets of these individual
lines from their vacuum rest wavelengths may also be
used to estimate a radial velocity (lines are tabulated with a
significance indicator, nSigma, and generally speaking, only lines
above a threshold, such as nSigma > 7, should be considered reliable).
New for DR2 are measures of the centers and depths of the Ca triplet
lines (8500, 8544, 8664), useful for determining radial velocities of
some type M stars. Note that the DR1
radial velocity measurements of stars had systematic errors which
have been corrected in DR2.
The current DR2 dispersion solutions for individual objects have
been demonstrated to be good to better than 5 km/s, including
correction for such effects as flexure of the telescope. This
dispersion error has been determined by examining multiple
observations of the same astrophysical object on a variety of plates
under a variety of observing conditions and showing that RVs were
reproducible to this accuracy. The identity of the actual template
star (which may be examined) are tabulated below. The 'Template
Number' corresponding to the highest cross correlation peak match for
any spectrum may be found under the keyword 'BESTTEMP' in the PDU
header of a SDSS spSpec-$mjd-$plate-$fiberid.fit file. An estimate of
the difference between the RV as determined from cross correlation
with a template and that determined by the median offset of all strong
(nSigma > 7) individual absorption lines is tabulated in the column
RVshift (in km/s). This figure may be used as an estimate of the
possible remaining systematics in Radial velocities for stars of a
given Spectra Type. In particular, estimates for White Dwarf and
spectral type M and L star Radial velocities are not accurately quoted
for DR2. Interested scientists are encouraged to compute their own
RVs off of the extracted spectra, keeping in mind that the wavelengths
measured of individual lines measured are on a vacuum system.
The absolute calibration of the wavelength system is based on
to the positions of known night sky lines obtained with the spectra.
This calibration has been checked by obtaining a special plate of
known radial velocity standards in the cluster M67, and the
velocities are in agreement with an absolute error of less than 4 km/s.
The relative rms velocity error is magnitude (signal-to-noise) dependent,
but repeated observations of the same stars have shown the errors to
be about 5 km/s (one sigma rms) for stars brighter than about g = 18.2 mag,
degrading to errors of 25 km/s for stars with g = 20.3 mag.
Template number | Sp Type | Plate | MJD | FiberID | RVshift | Notes |
1 | sdO | 593 | 52026 | 265 | +41 | |
2 | sdB | 301 | 51942 | 431 | +5 | |
3 | sdB | 390 | 51900 | 115 | -19 | |
4 | BHB | 480 | 51989 | 112 | -27 | |
5 | A | 300 | 51666 | 128 | -13 | |
6 | early F | 289 | 51990 | 5 | +10 | |
7 | early G | 306 | 51637 | 295 | +7 | |
8 | late F | 273 | 51957 | 304 | +11 | |
9 | G | 310 | 51990 | 356 | +7 | |
10 | G/K | 396 | 51816 | 605 | -4.6 | |
11 | early M | 402 | 51793 | 204 | +1.3 | |
12 | M | 367 | 51997 | 593 | +2.1 | |
Last modified: Mar 10 2004
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