THE APOGEE RED-CLUMP CATALOG: PRECISE DISTANCES, VELOCITIES, AND HIGH-RESOLUTION ELEMENTAL ABUNDANCES OVER A LARGE AREA OF THE MILKY WAY'S DISK

By Jo Bovy, D. Nidever, Hans-Walter Rix, L. Girardi, G. Zasowski, S. Chojnowski, J. Holtzman, C. Epstein, P. Frinchaboy, M. Hayden and 41 more. 2014

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The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III's Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) is a high-resolution near-infrared spectroscopic survey covering all of the major components of the Galaxy, including the dust-obscured regions of the inner Milky Way disk and bulge. Here we present a sample of 10,341 likely red-clump stars (RC) from the first two years of APOGEE operations, selected based on their position in color–metallicity–surface-gravity–effective-temperature space using a new method calibrated using stellar evolution models and high-quality asteroseismology data. The narrowness of the RC locus in color–metallicity–luminosity space allows us to assign distances to the stars with an accuracy of 5%–10%. The sample extends to typical distances of about 3 kpc from the Sun, with some stars out to 8 kpc, and spans a volume of approximately 100 kpc3 over 5 kpc ≲ R ≲ 14 kpc, |Z| ≲ 2 kpc, and −15° ≲ Galactocentric azimuth ≲ 30°. The APOGEE red-clump (APOGEE-RC) catalog contains photometry from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, reddening estimates, distances, line-of-sight velocities, stellar parameters and elemental abundances determined from the high-resolution APOGEE spectra, and matches to major proper motion catalogs. We determine the survey selection function for this data set and discuss how the RC selection samples the underlying stellar populations. We use this sample to limit any azimuthal variations in the median metallicity within the ≈45° azimuthal region covered by the current sample to be ⩽0.02 dex, which is more than an order of magnitude smaller than the radial metallicity gradient. This result constrains coherent non-axisymmetric flows within a few kiloparsecs from the Sun.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/32c720fd8ad45a35495e329bcf6863566ea8c4d4

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Citations in the corpus

Red giant masses and ages derived from carbon and nitrogen abundances (2015, unknown): “R diagram by Bovy et al. (2014), 2 or if log g < 0.002 21 × T eff − 7.85.”
The Milky Way's rotation curve out to 100 kpc and its constraint on the Galactic mass distribution (2016, methodology): “The PRCG stars are selected based on their positions in the metallicity dependent effective temperature-surfacegravity and colour-metallicity stellar parameters spaces, as developed by Bovy et al. (2014) and applied to the APOGEE data.”
Measuring Radial Orbit Migration in the Galactic Disk (2018, methodology): “The 3D position in the Galaxy can be obtained from these, assuming the Sun is at a Galactocentric distance Re=8 kpc and height ze=25 pc. Bovy et al. (2014) identified ∼20,000 red clump giants in APOGEE with a contamination fraction between ∼3% and 10% by red giant branch stars.”
THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH DATA RELEASES OF THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY: FINAL DATA FROM SDSS-III (2015, methodology): “The construction of the DR11 APOGEE-RC catalog and the derivation of the distances to individual stars were described in detail by Bovy et al. (2014).”
THE APOKASC CATALOG: AN ASTEROSEISMIC AND SPECTROSCOPIC JOINT SURVEY OF TARGETS IN THE KEPLER FIELDS (2014, methodology): “As an example of this potential, Bovy et al. (2014) recently developed a new method for selecting RC stars from spectro-photometric data that is calibrated using the precise seismic log g and evolutionary-state classifications in the APOKASC catalog.”
CHEMICAL CARTOGRAPHY WITH APOGEE: METALLICITY DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONS AND THE CHEMICAL STRUCTURE OF THE MILKY WAY DISK (2015, methodology): “Nidever et al. (2014) used the APOGEE Red Clump Catalog (Bovy et al. 2014) to categorize the distribution of stars in the [α/Fe] versus [Fe/H] plane outside of the solar neighborhood.”
THE STELLAR POPULATION STRUCTURE OF THE GALACTIC DISK (2015, methodology): “This catalog consists of a pure sample of RC stars selected from the APOGEE catalog using the method described in detail by Bovy et al. (2014), but applied to the DR12 data (see Alam et al. 2015).”
TRACING CHEMICAL EVOLUTION OVER THE EXTENT OF THE MILKY WAY'S DISK WITH APOGEE RED CLUMP STARS (2014, methodology): “The full RC radial metallicity gradient is presented in Bovy et al. (2014).”
A RADIAL AGE GRADIENT IN THE GEOMETRICALLY THICK DISK OF THE MILKY WAY (2016, methodology): “In this paper, we mostly focus our analysis on a sample of 14,685 red clump (RC) stars for which distances are determined with a precision of 5%–10% by Bovy et al. (2014).”
The age–metallicity structure of the Milky Way disc using APOGEE (2017, methodology): “We perform a simple cross match between our sample and the APOGEE red clump (RC) value added catalogue (VAC) (Bovy et al. 2014) and plot the red-clump derived distance (DRC) against the estimate from Hayden et al. (2014) (DMH) in Figure 3.”
THE CANNON: A DATA-DRIVEN APPROACH TO STELLAR LABEL DETERMINATION (2015, background): “This is noted in Bovy et al. (2014) who estimate that this offset shifts the red clump and red giant branches 0.2 dex closer together.”
THE SHAPE OF THE INNER MILKY WAY HALO FROM OBSERVATIONS OF THE PAL 5 AND GD–1 STELLAR STREAMS (2016, background): “The lack of azimuthal abundance differences in the few kpc near the Sun constrains b/a to be near one or y and y′ to be close to aligned (Bovy et al. 2014).”
Target Selection for the SDSS-IV APOGEE-2 Survey (2017, background): “Because RC stars meet APOGEE’s main sample color criteria (§4.1), many stars in the disk and halo sample are RC giants; Bovy et al. (2014) compiled a catalog of these stars for general use.”