The SAGE Photometric Sky Survey: Technical Description

TL;DR

The SAGE Photometric Sky Survey (SAGES) is a comprehensive northern sky survey using an 8-filter system to catalog about 500 million stars, providing detailed stellar parameters and interstellar extinction data.

Contribution

This paper introduces the SAGE photometric system, survey design, and initial test results, highlighting its capability to produce a uniform, deep stellar catalog with atmospheric parameters.

Findings

Survey covers 12,000 square degrees of the northern sky.

Photometric detection limit reaches V~20 mag at 5σ.

Initial test on NGC 6791 demonstrates system effectiveness.

Abstract

To investigate in more details of Stellar Abundance and Galactic Evolution (SAGE) and in a huge sample, we are performing a northern sky photometric survey named SAGES with the SAGE photometric system, which consists of 8 filters: Str\"omgren-$u$, SAGE-$v$, SDSS $g$, $r$, $i$, DDO-$51$, $H\alpha_{wide}$, and $H\alpha _{narrow}$, including three Sloan broadband filters, three intermediate-band filters and two narrow-band filters, and one newly-designed narrow-band filter. SAGES covers $\sim$12,000 square degrees of the northern sky with $\delta > -5 ^{\circ}$, excluding the Galactic disk ($|b|<10^{\circ}$) and the sky area of 12 hr $<$ R.A. $<$ 18\,hr. The photometric detection limit depth at signal-to-noise ratio $5\sigma$ can be as deep as $V\sim$20\,mag. The SAGES will produce a depth-uniformed photometric catalogue for $\sim$500 million stars with atmospheric parameters including effective temperature $T_{\rm eff}$, surface gravity log\,g, and metallicity [Fe/H], as well as interstellar extinction to each individual target. In this work, we will briefly introduce the SAGE photometric system, the SAGE survey, and a preliminary test field of the open cluster NGC\,6791 and around.