The LEGUE Input Catalogue for Dark Night Observing in the LAMOST Pilot Survey

TL;DR

This paper describes the design and target selection process of the LEGUE input catalog for the dark night observations in the LAMOST Pilot Survey, focusing on Milky Way stellar candidates and the survey's observational strategies.

Contribution

It provides a detailed overview of the target selection, sky region choices, and operational constraints for the LAMOST Pilot Survey's dark night observations.

Findings

Target selection categories are well-defined for the survey.

The survey's input catalog is based on SDSS photometry.

Operational constraints like bright star placement are discussed.

Abstract

We outline the design of the dark nights portion of the LAMOST Pilot Survey, which began observations in October 2011. 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 realized. We illustrate the difference between the overall input catalog - Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) photometry - and the final targets selected for LAMOST observation.