A new catalogue of radial velocity standard stars from the APOGEE data

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new catalogue of 18,080 radial velocity standard stars from APOGEE data, offering a larger, more precise set suitable for calibrating various Galactic surveys and extending sky coverage.

Contribution

The paper provides the first extensive catalogue of RV standard stars from APOGEE, with improved stability and fainter magnitude limits, enhancing calibration capabilities for multiple surveys.

Findings

Median RV stability around 240 m/s over 200+ days

Catalogue covers a broad magnitude range (7-12.5 mag)

Largely includes red giants, extending previous standards

Abstract

We present a new catalogue of 18 080 radial velocity standard stars selected from the APOGEE data. These RV standard stars are observed at least three times and have a median stability ($3\sigma_{\rm RV}$) around 240 m s$^{-1}$ over a time baseline longer than 200 days. They are largely distributed in the northern sky and could be extended to the southern sky by the future APOGEE-2 survey. Most of the stars are red giants ($J - K_{\rm s} \ge 0.5$) owing to the APOGEE target selection criteria. Only about ten per cent of them are main-sequence stars. The $H$ band magnitude range of the stars is 7-12.5 mag with the faint limit much fainter than the magnitudes of previous RV standard stars. As an application, we show the new set of standard stars to determine the radial velocity zero points of the RAVE, the LAMOST {and the Gaia-RVS} Galactic spectroscopic surveys.