The RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE): Fourth data release

TL;DR

This paper presents the fourth data release of RAVE, providing stellar parameters, radial velocities, elemental abundances, and distances for over 425,000 stars, with improved pipelines and data accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a new pipeline for stellar parameter estimation that accounts for spectral degeneracies and photometric data, enhancing data quality over previous releases.

Findings

Improved accuracy of stellar atmospheric parameters.

Enhanced elemental abundance measurements for six elements.

Expanded dataset with over 425,000 stars available publicly.

Abstract

We present the stellar atmospheric parameters (effective temperature, surface gravity, overall metallicity), radial velocities, individual abundances and distances determined for 425 561 stars, which constitute the fourth public data release of the RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE). The stellar atmospheric parameters are computed using a new pipeline, based on the algorithms of MATISSE and DEGAS. The spectral degeneracies and the 2MASS photometric information are now better taken into consideration, improving the parameter determination compared to the previous RAVE data releases. The individual abundances for six elements (magnesium, aluminum, silicon, titanium, iron and nickel) are also given, based on a special-purpose pipeline which is also improved compared to that available for the RAVE DR3 and Chemical DR1 data releases. Together with photometric information and proper motions, these data can be retrieved from the RAVE collaboration website and the Vizier database.