ABYSS I: Targeting strategy for APOGEE & BOSS young star survey in SDSS-V

TL;DR

The paper presents a comprehensive targeting strategy for the ABYSS survey within SDSS-V, aiming to create the largest spectroscopic catalog of young stars across the Milky Way using diverse selection criteria.

Contribution

It introduces an innovative, multi-criteria targeting approach to identify young stars, enabling a large-scale, representative spectroscopic survey of the Galaxy's young stellar population.

Findings

Design of 8 selection criteria for young star identification

Compilation of a catalog of ~200,000 sources targeting young stars

Coverage includes nearby associations and distant Galactic regions

Abstract

The fifth iteration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V) is set to obtain optical and near-infrared spectra of $\sim$5 million stars of all ages and masses throughout the Milky Way. As a part of these efforts, APOGEE & BOSS Young Star Survey (ABYSS) will observe $\sim10^5$ stars with ages $<$30 Myr that have been selected using a set of homogeneous selection functions that make use of different tracers of youth. The ABYSS targeting strategy we describe in this paper is aimed to provide the largest spectroscopic census of young stars to-date. It consists of 8 different types of selection criteria that take the position on the HR diagram, infrared excess, variability, as well as the position in phase space in consideration. The resulting catalog of $\sim$200,000 sources (of which a half are expected to be observed) provides representative coverage of the young Galaxy, including both nearby diffuse associations as well as more distant massive complexes, reaching towards the inner Galaxy and the Galactic center.