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Description
This table contains the Data Release 12 Quasar Catalog (DR12Q) from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III). This catalog includes all SDSS-III/BOSS objects that were spectroscopically targeted as quasar candidates during the full survey and that are confirmed as quasars via visual inspection of the spectra, have luminosities M_i_[z=2] < -20.5 (in a LambdaCDM cosmology with H<sub>0</sub> = 70 km/s/Mpc, Omega<sub>M</sub> = 0.3, and Omega<sub>Lambda</sub> = 0.7), and either display at least one emission line with a full width at half maximum (FWHM) larger than 500 km/s or, if not, have interesting/complex absorption features. The catalog also includes previously known quasars (mostly from SDSS-I and II) that were re-observed by BOSS. The catalog contains 297,301 quasars (272,026 are new discoveries since the beginning of SDSS-III) detected over 9376 deg<sup>2</sup> with robust identification and redshift measured by a combination of principal component eigenspectra. The number of quasars with z > 2.15 (184,101, of which 167,742 are new discoveries) is about an order of magnitude greater than the number of z > 2.15 quasars known prior to BOSS. Redshifts and FWHMs are provided for the strongest emission lines (C IV, C III], Mg II). The catalog identifies 29,580 broad absorption line quasars and their characteristics are listed in the file dr12qbal.dat that is available at the CDS (<a href="http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/ftp/cats/VII/279/">http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/ftp/cats/VII/279/</a>). For each object, the catalog presents five-band (u, g, r, i, z) CCD-based photometry with typical accuracy of 0.03 mag together with some information on the optical morphology and the selection criteria. When available, the catalog also provides information on the optical variability of quasars using SDSS and Palomar Transient Factory multi-epoch photometry. The catalog also contains X-ray, ultraviolet, near-infrared, and radio emission properties of the quasars, when available, from other large-area surveys. The calibrated digital spectra, covering the wavelength region 3600-10,500 Angstrom at a spectral resolution in the range 1300 < R < 2500, can be retrieved from the SDSS Catalog Archive Server at <a href="http://www.sdss.org/dr12/data_access/">http://www.sdss.org/dr12/data_access/</a>. In their paper, the authors also provide a supplemental list of an additional 4,841 quasars that have been identified serendipitously outside of the superset defined to derive the main quasar catalog, available as the file dr12qsp.dat that is available at the CDS (<a href="http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/ftp/cats/VII/279/">http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/ftp/cats/VII/279/</a>). This table contains the final quasar catalog of the SDSS-III/BOSS survey resulting from five years of observations. The catalog, which the authors call "DR12Q", contains 297,301 quasars, 184,101 of which have z > 2.15. the authors provide robust identification from visual inspection and refined redshift measurements based on the result of a principal component analysis of the spectra. The present catalog contains about 80% more quasars than their previous release (Paris et al., 2014, "DR10Q", <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/VII/270">CDS Cat. VII/270</a>). In SDSS-III, all fluxes in the 5 SDSS bands (u, g, r, i and z) are expressed in terms of "nanomaggies" (nMgy), which are a convenient linear unit. These quantities are related to standard AB magnitudes thus: an object with a flux F given in nMgy has a Pogson magnitude (on the AB scale) m = [22.5 mag] - 2.5*log<sub>10</sub>(F). A flux of 1 Mgy is therefore close to 3631 Jy, and 1 nMgy = ~3.631 uJy (µJy). This table was updated to DR12Q in July 2017 based on <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/VII/279">CDS Catalog VII/279</a> file dr12q.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .
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