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The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), one of the programs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), has now completed its systematic, homogeneous spectroscopic survey sampling all major populations of the Milky Way. After a three year observing campaign on the Sloan 2.5-m Telescope, APOGEE has collected a half million high resolution (R~22,500), high S/N (>100), infrared (1.51-1.70 microns) spectra for 146,000 stars, with time series information via repeat visits to most of these stars. This paper describes the motivations for the survey and its overall design---hardware, field placement, target selection, operations---and gives an overview of these aspects as well as the data reduction, analysis and products. An index is also given to the complement of technical papers that describe various critical survey components in detail. Finally, we discuss the achieved survey performance and illustrate the variety of potential uses of the data products by way of a number of science demonstrations, which span from time series analysis of stellar spectral variations and radial velocity variations from stellar companions, to spatial maps of kinematics, metallicity and abundance patterns across the Galaxy and as a function of age, to new views of the interstellar medium, the chemistry of star clusters, and the discovery of rare stellar species. As part of SDSS-III Data Release 12, all of the APOGEE data products are now publicly available.
We describe the design and performance of the near-infrared (1.51--1.70 micron), fiber-fed, multi-object (300 fibers), high resolution (R = lambda/delta lambda ~ 22,500) spectrograph built for the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE). APOGEE is a survey of ~ 10^5 red giant stars that systematically sampled all Milky Way populations (bulge, disk, and halo) to study the Galaxys chemical and kinematical history. It was part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) from 2011 -- 2014 using the 2.5 m Sloan Foundation Telescope at Apache Point Observatory, New Mexico. The APOGEE-2 survey is now using the spectrograph as part of SDSS-IV, as well as a second spectrograph, a close copy of the first, operating at the 2.5 m du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Although several fiber-fed, multi-object, high resolution spectrographs have been built for visual wavelength spectroscopy, the APOGEE spectrograph is one of the first such instruments built for observations in the near-infrared. The instruments successful development was enabled by several key innovations, including a gang connector to allow simultaneous connections of 300 fibers; hermetically sealed feedthroughs to allow fibers to pass through the cryostat wall continuously; the first cryogenically deployed mosaic volume phase holographic grating; and a large refractive camera that includes mono-crystalline silicon and fused silica elements with diameters as large as ~ 400 mm. This paper contains a comprehensive description of all aspects of the instrument including the fiber system, optics and opto-mechanics, detector arrays, mechanics and cryogenics, instrument control, calibration system, optical performance and stability, lessons learned, and design changes for the second instrument.
APOGEE is a large-scale, NIR, high-resolution (R~20,000) spectroscopic survey of Galactic stars. It is one of the four experiments in SDSS-III. Because APOGEE will observe in the H band, it will be the first survey to pierce through Galactic dust and provide a vast, uniform database of chemical abundances and radial velocities for stars across all Galactic populations (bulge, disk, and halo). The survey will be conducted with a dedicated, 300-fiber, cryogenic, spectrograph that is being built at the University of Virginia, coupled to the ARC 2.5m telescope at Apache Point Observatory. APOGEE will use a significant fraction of the SDSS-III bright time during a three-year period to observe, at high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N>100), about 100,000 giant stars selected directly from 2MASS down to a typical flux limit of H<13. The main scientific objectives of APOGEE are: (1) measuring unbiased metallicity distributions and abundance patterns for the different Galactic stellar populations, (2) studying the processes of star formation, feedback, and chemical mixing in the Milky Way, (3) surveying the dynamics of the bulge and disk, placing constraints on the nature and influence of the Galactic bar and spiral arms, and (4) using extensive chemodynamical data, particularly in the inner Galaxy, to unravel its formation and evolution.
The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III, explores the stellar populations of the Milky Way using the Sloan 2.5-m telescope linked to a high resolution (R~22,500), near-infrared (1.51-1.70 microns) spectrograph with 300 optical fibers. For over 150,000 predominantly red giant branch stars that APOGEE targeted across the Galactic bulge, disks and halo, the collected high S/N (>100 per half-resolution element) spectra provide accurate (~0.1 km/s) radial velocities, stellar atmospheric parameters, and precise (~0.1 dex) chemical abundances for about 15 chemical species. Here we describe the basic APOGEE data reduction software that reduces multiple 3D raw data cubes into calibrated, well-sampled, combined 1D spectra, as implemented for the SDSS-III/APOGEE data releases (DR10, DR11 and DR12). The processing of the near-IR spectral data of APOGEE presents some challenges for reduction, including automated sky subtraction and telluric correction over a 3 degree diameter field and the combination of spectrally dithered spectra. We also discuss areas for future improvement.
The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) is a high-resolution infrared spectroscopic survey spanning all Galactic environments (i.e., bulge, disk, and halo), with the principal goal of constraining dynamical and chemical evolution models of the Milky Way. APOGEE takes advantage of the reduced effects of extinction at infrared wavelengths to observe the inner Galaxy and bulge at an unprecedented level of detail. The surveys broad spatial and wavelength coverage enables users of APOGEE data to address numerous Galactic structure and stellar populations issues. In this paper we describe the APOGEE targeting scheme and document its various target classes to provide the necessary background and reference information to analyze samples of APOGEE data with awareness of the imposed selection criteria and resulting sample properties. APOGEEs primary sample consists of ~100,000 red giant stars, selected to minimize observational biases in age and metallicity. We present the methodology and considerations that drive the selection of this sample and evaluate the accuracy, efficiency, and caveats of the selection and sampling algorithms. We also describe additional target classes that contribute to the APOGEE sample, including numerous ancillary science programs, and we outline the targeting data that will be included in the public data releases.
We present a new grid of model photospheres for the SDSS-III/APOGEE survey of stellar populations of the Galaxy, calculated using the ATLAS9 and MARCS codes. New opacity distribution functions were generated to calculate ATLAS9 model photospheres. MARCS models were calculated based on opacity sampling techniques. The metallicity ([M/H]) spans from -5 to 1.5 for ATLAS and -2.5 to 0.5 for MARCS models. There are three main differences with respect to previous ATLAS9 model grids: a new corrected H2O linelist, a wide range of carbon ([C/M]) and alpha element [alpha/M] variations, and solar reference abundances from Asplund et al. 2005. The added range of varying carbon and alpha element abundances also extends the previously calculated MARCS model grids. Altogether 1980 chemical compositions were used for the ATLAS9 grid, and 175 for the MARCS grid. Over 808 thousand ATLAS9 models were computed spanning temperatures from 3500K to 30000K and log g from 0 to 5, where larger temperatures only have high gravities. The MARCS models span from 3500K to 5500K, and log g from 0 to 5. All model atmospheres are publically available online.