Stellar SEDs from 0.3-2.5 Microns: Tracing the Stellar Locus and Searching for Color Outliers in SDSS and 2MASS

TL;DR

This study characterizes the stellar locus in ugrizJHKs color space using SDSS and 2MASS data, enabling identification of color outliers such as white dwarfs, QSOs, and giants, with implications for stellar and galactic studies.

Contribution

It provides detailed polynomial fits of the stellar locus across multiple bands and develops an algorithm to detect objects with unusual colors in large surveys.

Findings

Identified 370 white-dwarf/M dwarf pairs and 93 QSOs among color outliers.

Developed an algorithm to robustly find color outliers in seven-dimensional color space.

Demonstrated that WDMD pairs and QSOs can be distinguished by J-Ks and r-z colors.

Abstract

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) are rich resources for studying stellar astrophysics and the structure and formation history of the Galaxy. As new surveys and instruments adopt similar filter sets, it is increasingly important to understand the properties of the ugrizJHKs stellar locus, both to inform studies of `normal' main sequence stars as well as for robust searches for point sources with unusual colors. Using a sample of ~600,000 point sources detected by SDSS and 2MASS, we tabulate the position and width of the ugrizJHKs stellar locus as a function of g-i color, and provide accurate polynomial fits. We map the Morgan-Keenan spectral type sequence to the median stellar locus by using synthetic photometry of spectral standards and by analyzing 3000 SDSS stellar spectra with a custom spectral typing pipeline. We develop an algorithm to calculate a point source's minimum separation from the stellar locus in a seven-dimensional color space, and use it to robustly identify objects with unusual colors, as well as spurious SDSS/2MASS matches. Analysis of a final catalog of 2117 color outliers identifies 370 white-dwarf/M dwarf (WDMD) pairs, 93 QSOs, and 90 M giant/carbon star candidates, and demonstrates that WDMD pairs and QSOs can be distinguished on the basis of their J-Ks and r-z colors. We also identify a group of objects with correlated offsets in the u-g vs. g-r and g-r vs. r-i color-color spaces, but subsequent follow-up is required to reveal the nature of these objects. Future applications of this algorithm to a matched SDSS-UKIDSS catalog may well identify additional classes of objects with unusual colors by probing new areas of color-magnitude space.