lss_combmask

This file describes the geometry of the large-scale structure sample at the level of target fields, with the bright star mask cut out of it. That is, it is equivalent to the lss_geometry minus the lss_bsmask. It contains a set of spherical polygons (the concept is explained well at the mangle site). For each polygon, we give pointers to which target field it corresponds to and which sector it corresponds to.

This file can be read in using the

read_fits_polygons

tool in idlutils.

The columns are:

XCAPS[3,N]: directions for each cap (as specified in the mangle documentation)
CMCAPS[N]: size of each cap (as specified in the mangle documentation)
NCAPS: number of caps
WEIGHT: weight assigned to each cap (ignore this)
STR: area of each cap in steradians
USE_CAPS: bitmask designating which caps to use
SECTOR: sector number in the tiling geometry (each sector is an area covered by a unique set of tiles)
FGOTMAIN: fraction of targets in Main which succcessfully get redshifts in this sector
MMAX: effective Main sample flux limit
DIFFRUN: 1 if the "best" photometry is from a different run than the target geometry, 0 otherwise
ITILING_GEOMETRY: index of the polygon in sdss_tiling_geometry file which contains this polygon
ITARGET_GEOMETRY: index of the polygon in sdss_target_geometry file which contains this polygon

There is an ASCII version of this file in mangle format called lss_combmask.ply. Also, there is an associated file called lss_combmask_info.dat with the columns:

[diffrun] [itiling_geometry] [itarget_geometry] [sector] [mmax]

NYU Value-Added Galaxy Catalog