SPIDERS (The SPectroscopic IDentification of eROSITA Sources) is a programme dedicated to the homogeneous and complete spectroscopic follow-up of X-ray active galactic nuclei and galaxy clusters over a large area (similar to 7500 deg(2)) of the extragalactic sky. SPIDERS is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)-IV project, together with the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and the Time-Domain Spectroscopic Survey. This paper describes the largest project within SPIDERS before the launch of eROSITA: an optical spectroscopic survey of X-ray-selected, massive (similar to 10(14)-10(15) M-circle dot) galaxy clusters discovered in ROSAT and XMM-Newton imaging. The immediate aim is to determine precise (Delta(z) similar to 0.001) redshifts for 4000-5000 of these systems out to z similar to 0.6. The scientific goal of the program is precision cosmology, using clusters as probes of large-scale structure in the expanding Universe. We present the cluster samples, target selection algorithms and observation strategies. We demonstrate the efficiency of selecting targets using a combination of SDSS imaging data, a robust red-sequence finder and a dedicated prioritization scheme. We describe a set of algorithms and work-flow developed to collate spectra and assign cluster membership, and to deliver catalogues of spectroscopically confirmed clusters. We discuss the relevance of line-of-sight velocity dispersion estimators for the richer systems. We illustrate our techniques by constructing a catalogue of 230 spectroscopically validated clusters (0.031 < z < 0.658), found in pilot observations. We discuss two potential science applications of the SPIDERS sample: the study of the X-ray luminosity-velocity dispersion (L-X-sigma) relation and the building of stacked phase-space diagrams.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/622920 |
| Date | 21 December 2016 |
| Creators | Clerc, N., Merloni, A., Zhang, Y.-Y., Finoguenov, A., Dwelly, T., Nandra, K., Collins, C., Dawson, K., Kneib, J.-P., Rozo, E., Rykoff, E., Sadibekova, T., Brownstein, J., Lin, Y.-T., Ridl, J., Salvato, M., Schwope, A., Steinmetz, M., Seo, H.-J., Tinker, J. |
| Contributors | Univ Arizona, Dept Phys |
| Publisher | OXFORD UNIV PRESS |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article |
| Rights | © 2016 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society |
| Relation | https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mnras/stw2214 |
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