The LEGUE High Latitude Bright Survey Design for the LAMOST Pilot Survey

TL;DR

This paper details the design and target selection strategy for the LAMOST Pilot Survey's high latitude bright star observations, emphasizing a statistically optimized selection process for spectroscopic targets.

Contribution

It introduces a novel statistical target selection algorithm that balances rare and common objects, ensuring a well-understood and efficient survey footprint for the LAMOST Pilot Survey.

Findings

Successful implementation of the target selection algorithm

Effective coverage of the specified Galactic Cap regions

Demonstration of plate design based on the selection process

Abstract

We describe the footprint and input catalog for bright nights in the LAMOST Pilot Survey, which began in October 2011. Targets are selected from two stripes in the north and south Galactic Cap regions, centered at $\alpha$= 29$^\circ$, with 10$^\circ$ width in declination, covering right ascension of 135$^\circ-290^\circ$ and -30$^\circ$ to 30$^\circ$ respectively. We selected spectroscopic targets from a combination of the SDSS and 2MASS point source catalogs. The catalog of stars defining the field centers (as required by the Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor at the center of the LAMOST field) consists of all V < 8m stars from the Hipparcos catalog. We employ a statistical selection algorithm that assigns priorities to targets based on their positions in multidimensional color/magnitude space. This scheme overemphasizes rare objects and de-emphasizes more populated regions of magnitude and color phase space, while ensuring a smooth, well-understood selection function. A demonstration of plate design is presented based on the Shack-Hartmann star catalog and an input catalog that was generated by our target selection routines.