For each stripe, 12 non-overlapping but contiguous scan lines are
defined parallel to the stripe great circle. Six of these scan lines
are covered when the ``north'' strip of the stripe is scanned, and the
remaining six are covered by the ``south'' strip. Each scan line is
wide and overlaps its neighbor by 
1 arcmin.
Each overlap region is bisected by a line of constant 
. Objects
in overlap regions can have a detection in each of the scan lines, and
we assign one of the scan lines to have the primary detection
based upon which side of the bisecting line it falls. Many queries
want to consider only these objects, so we have constructed the
Primary class in the catalog archive server. The classes
Star, Galaxy, Sky, and Unknown are inherited from
Primary. Other object detections are (usually) in the
Secondary class, with its inherited classes StarSecondary,
GalaxySecondary, SkySecondary, and UnknownSecondary. Two
kinds of objects are not in the Primary or Secondary
classes, and we put them in the Family class: objects which are
tagged as BRIGHT (Table 9); and parent objects
which have been successfully deblended.
Object detections in the area that overlaps adjacent stripes which we have not yet observed are in the Secondary class. These may be recovered by using the status flag in Table 6. The flag bits AR_STATUS_OK_SCANLINE and AR_STATUS_OK_STRIPE of status are set for all objects that are within one stripe.
Objects that lie close to the bisector between scan lines present some difficulty. Errors in the centroids or astrometric calibrations can place such objects on either side of the bisector. A resolution is performed at all bisectors, and if two objects which are a primary detection lie within 2 arcsec of each other, then one object is declared primary and the other secondary.
In the EDR, most data are taken along stripes that are isolated. Runs 752 and 756 cover stripe 10, and we plan to observe the stripes adjacent to it. Therefore, only objects which do not fall in an area that will overlap with the adjacent stripes may be marked as Primary detections. Runs 94 and 125 cover stripe 82, in the southern Galactic hemisphere. We do not plan to observe the stripes adjacent to stripe 82, so all objects may be marked as Primary detections.
Objects must satisfy other criteria as well to be labeled primary; an object must not be flagged BRIGHT (as there is a duplicate ``regular'' detection of the same object; § 4.4.2), and must not be a deblended parent (as the children are already included); thus it must not be flagged BLENDED unless the NODEBLEND flag is set. These are put in the Family class.
The set of all primary detections from interleaving strips comprise a complete object catalog.