The DOI matches its Crossref record; 67 of the 67 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Target-selection Pipeline for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
Open accessAbstract
In 2021 May, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) began a 5 yr survey of approximately 50 million total extragalactic and Galactic targets. The primary DESI dark-time targets are emission line galaxies, luminous red galaxies, and quasars. In bright time, DESI will focus on two surveys known as the Bright Galaxy Survey and the Milky Way Survey. DESI also observes a selection of “secondary” targets for bespoke science goals. This paper gives an overview of the publicly available pipeline ( desitarget ) used to process targets for DESI observations. Highlights include details of the different DESI survey targeting phases, the targeting ID ( TARGETID ) used to define unique targets, the bitmasks used to indicate a particular type of target, the data model and structure of DESI targeting files, and examples of how to access and use the desitarget code base. This paper will also describe “supporting” DESI target classes, such as standard stars, sky locations, and random catalogs that mimic the angular selection function of DESI targets. The DESI target-selection pipeline is complex and sizable; this paper attempts to summarize the most salient information required to understand and work with DESI targeting data.
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“Despite the increase in scope and complexity of future imaging surveys, the quality of exposures in large campaigns will remain essential to downstream tasks, such as astrometric (e.g., Lang et al. 2009), and photometric (e.g., Stubbs & Tonry 2006) measurements, and target selection to facilitate follow-up studies (e.g., Myers et al. 2023).”
From A Semi-Supervised Learning Method for the Identification of Bad Exposures in Large Imaging Surveys (2026) · cites this paper as Myers et al. 2023
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Citations
Cites
Harris, C. R., Millman, K. J., van der Walt, S. J., Gommers, R., Virtanen, P., Cournapeau, D., Wieser, E., Taylor, J., Berg, S., Smith, N. J., et al. (2020) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2 · Cited by 23,826 · cited 1×
“…WISE Software: astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013, 2018), fitsio (https://github.com/esheldon/fitsio), healpy (Zonca et al. 2019), matplotlib (Caswell et al. 2021), numpy (Harris et al. 2020), photutils (Bradley et al. 2019), pyyaml (https://pyyaml.org/), scipy (Gommers et al. 2021).”
Harris, C., Millman, K., van der Walt, S., Gommers, R., Virtanen, P., Cournapeau, D., Wieser, E., Taylor, J., Berg, S., Smith, N., et al. (2020) · RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · Cited by 17,844
Astropy: A community Python package for astronomy
The Astropy Collaboration, Robitaille, T. P., Tollerud, E. J., Greenfield, P., Droettboom, M., Bray, E., Aldcroft, T., Davis, M., Ginsburg, A., Price-Whelan, A. M., et al. (2013) · Astronomy & Astrophysics · doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201322068 · Cited by 14,620
Self-citationGaia Data Release 2: Summary of the contents and survey properties
Gaia Collaboration, Brown, A. G. A., Vallenari, A., Prusti, T., de Bruijne, J. H. J., Babusiaux, C., Bailer-Jones, C. A. L., Biermann, M., Evans, D. W., Eyer, L., et al. (2018) · Astronomy & Astrophysics · doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201833051 · Cited by 8,442
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Technical Summary
York, D., Adelman, J., Anderson, J., Anderson, S., Annis, J., Bahcall, N., Bakken, J., Barkhouser, R., Bastian, S., Berman, E., et al. (2000) · The Astronomical Journal · doi:10.1086/301513 · Cited by 8,368 · cited 1×
“The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; York et al. 2000), in particular, greatly advanced the frontiers of software development for large sky surveys.”
BackgroundThe Astropy Project: Building an Open-science Project and Status of the v2.0 Core Package
Price-Whelan, A., Sipőcz, B., Günther, H. M., Lim, P., Crawford, S., Conseil, S., Shupe, D., Craig, M., Dencheva, N., Ginsburg, A., et al. (2018) · Astronomical Journal · doi:10.3847/1538-3881/aabc4f · Cited by 6,887
Self-citationGórski, K., Hivon, E., Banday, A., Wandelt, B. D., Hansen, F., Reinecke, M., & Bartelmann, M. (2004) · The Astrophysical Journal · doi:10.1086/427976 · Cited by 5,217 · cited 1×
“Throughout this paper, code examples are given in the Python programming language and HEALPixel1 nside numbers (Górski et al. 2005; Zonca et al. 2019) are always expressed in the NESTED scheme.”
MethodBrown, A. G. A., Vallenari, A., Prusti, T., de Bruijne, J. H. J., Babusiaux, C., Biermann, M., Creevey, O. L., Evans, D. W., Eyer, L., Hutton, A., et al. (2020) · Astronomy and Astrophysics · doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202039657 · Cited by 3,937
Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Early Data Release
Stoughton, C., Lupton, R. H., Bernardi, M., Blanton, M. R., Burles, S. M., Castander, F. J., Connolly, A. J., Eisenstein, D. J., Frieman, J. A., Hennessy, G. S., et al. (2002) · The Astronomical Journal · doi:10.1086/324741 · Cited by 2,389 · cited 2×
“A UNIQUE IDENTIFIER FOR DESI TARGETS DESI utilizes a unique ID, similar to the objID used by the SDSS (e.g. Stoughton et al. 2002), to track tar- geted objects through the end-to-end pipeline.”
MethodSelf-citationThe 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: spectra and redshifts
Colless, M., Dalton, G., Maddox, S., Sutherland, W. J., Norberg, P., Cole, S., Bland‐Hawthorn, J., Bridges, T. J., Cannon, R., Collins, C. A., et al. (2001) · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society · doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.2001.04902.x · Cited by 2,368 · cited 1×
“…to account for different emulsions on glass plates versus films, and the survey pipeline generated masks to miti- gate density fluctuations caused by bright stars, varying flux limits, satellite tracks and plate defects (e.g. Colless et al. 2001, 2003; Croom et al. 2004; Smith et al. 2005).”
Background
Research works printed but not linked: 3
- Høg, 2000, A&A, 355, L27
- Palmese, 2021, GCN, 30923, 1
- Wells, 1981, A&AS, 44, 363
Cited by
Sorted by citations
DESI 2024 VI: cosmological constraints from the measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations
Adame, A. G., Aguilar, J., Ahlen, S. P., Alam, S., Alexander, D. M., Alvarez, M. A., Alves, O., Anand, A., Andrade, U., Armengaud, E., et al. (2025) · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2025/02/021 · Cited by 1,156
Self-citationDESI DR2 results. II. Measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations and cosmological constraints
Abdul Karim, M., Aguilar, J., Ahlen, S., Alam, S., Allen, L., Prieto, C. A., Alves, O., Anand, A., Andrade, U., Armengaud, E., et al. (2025) · Physical Review D · doi:10.1103/tr6y-kpc6 · Cited by 856
Self-citationThe Early Data Release of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
Adame, A. G., Aguilar, J., Ahlen, S. P., Alam, S., Aldering, G., Alexander, D. M., Alfarsy, R., Prieto, C. A., Alvarez, M. A., Alves, O., et al. (2024) · The Astronomical Journal · doi:10.3847/1538-3881/ad3217 · Cited by 362
“First, the tractorphot catalogs contain all the photometric quantities measured by Tractor in the LS / DR9, not just the measurements included in the light-weight sweep catalogs used to select DESI targets ( see also Myers et al. 2023 ) .”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialSelf-citationThe DESI Bright Galaxy Survey: Final Target Selection, Design, and Validation
Hahn, C., Wilson, M. J., Ruiz-Macias, O., Cole, S., Weinberg, D. H., Moustakas, J., Kremin, A., Tinker, J. L., Smith, A. G., Wechsler, R. H., et al. (2023) · The Astronomical Journal · doi:10.3847/1538-3881/accff8 · Cited by 283
“These targets can be accessed in DESI catalogs as described in Myers et al. (2023) under the BGS_WISE bit name.”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialSelf-citationDESI 2024 IV: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from the Lyman alpha forest
Adame, A. G., Aguilar, J., Ahlen, S. P., Alam, S., Alexander, D. M., Alvarez, M. A., Alves, O., Anand, A., Andrade, U., Armengaud, E., et al. (2025) · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2025/01/124 · Cited by 281
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Myers, A. D., Moustakas, J., Bailey, S., Weaver, B. A., Cooper, A. P., Forero-Romero, J. E., Abolfathi, B., Alexander, D. M., Brooks, D., Chaussidon, E., Chuang, C.-H., Dawson, K., Dey, A., Dey, B., Dhungana, G., Doel, P., Fanning, K., Gaztañaga, E., A Gontcho, S. G., Gonzalez-Morales, A. X., Hahn, C., Herrera-Alcantar, H. K., Honscheid, K., Ishak, M., Karim, T., Kirkby, D., Kisner, T., Koposov, S. E., Kremin, A., Lan, T.-W., Landriau, M., Lang, D., Levi, M. E., Magneville, C., Napolitano, L., Martini, P., Meisner, A., Newman, J. A., Palanque-Delabrouille, N., Percival, W., Poppett, C., Prada, F., Raichoor, A., Ross, A. J., Schlafly, E. F., Schlegel, D., Schubnell, M., Tan, T., Tarle, G., Wilson, M. J., Yèche, C., Zhou, R., Zhou, Z., & Zou, H.
- Affiliations
- University of Wyoming (US)
- Siena College (US)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (US)
- NSF NOIRLab (US)
- National Tsing Hua University (TW)
- Universidad de Los Andes (CO)
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- Durham University (GB)
- University College London (GB)
- Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives (FR)
- University of Utah (US)
- University of Pittsburgh (US)
- Southern Methodist University (US)
- The Ohio State University (US)
- Institute of Space Sciences (ES)
- Universidad de Guanajuato (MX)
- The University of Texas at Dallas (US)
- Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian (US)
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- National Taiwan University (TW)
- Perimeter Institute (CA)
- Harvard University (US)
- University of Waterloo (CA)
- Space Sciences Laboratory (US)
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (ES)
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (US)
- University of Michigan (US)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Myers, Adam D.
- ORCID
- Moustakas, John
- Bailey, Stephen
- Cooper, Andrew P.
- Forero-Romero, Jaime E.
- Abolfathi, Bela
- Alexander, David M.
- Brooks, David
- Chaussidon, Edmond
- Chuang, Chia-Hsun
- Dawson, Kyle
- Dey, Arjun
- Dey, Biprateep
- Dhungana, Govinda
- Doel, Peter
- Fanning, Kevin
- Gaztañaga, Enrique
- Gonzalez-Morales, Alma X.
- Hahn, ChangHoon
- Herrera-Alcantar, Hiram K.
- Honscheid, Klaus
- Ishak, Mustapha
- Karim, Tanveer
- Kirkby, David
- Kisner, Theodore
- Koposov, Sergey E.
- Kremin, Anthony
- Lan, Ting-Wen
- Landriau, Martin
- Lang, Dustin
- Levi, Michael E.
- Napolitano, Lucas
- Martini, Paul
- Meisner, Aaron
- Newman, Jeffrey A.
- Palanque-Delabrouille, Nathalie
- Percival, Will
- Poppett, Claire
- Prada, Francisco
- Raichoor, Anand
- Ross, Ashley J.
- Schlafly, Edward F.
- Schlegel, David
- Schubnell, Michael
- Tan, Ting
- Tarle, Gregory
- Yèche, Christophe
- Zhou, Rongpu
- Zhou, Zhimin
- Zou, Hu
- Venue
- The Astronomical Journal
- Publisher
- American Astronomical Society
- Published
- 2023-01-11
- Volume
- 165
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 50
- ISSN
- 0004-6256 (ISSN-L)
- 1538-3881
- OpenAlex
- W4292421616
- Cited by
- 158
- References
- 67
- Citations by year
- 2026: 40 · 2025: 47 · 2024: 37 · 2023: 33
- FWCI
- 18.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- The Astronomical Journal (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Durham Research Online (Durham University) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (acceptedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- DIGITAL.CSIC (Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Durham Research Online (Durham University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (submittedVersion)
- Edinburgh Research Explorer (University of Edinburgh) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Apollo (University of Cambridge) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (cc-by)
- Apollo
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (cc-by)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy (DE-SC0019022, DE-SC0020086, DE-AC02-05CH11231)
- Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (109-2112-M-007-011-MY3)
- National Science Foundation (AST-0950945)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Instrumentation › Astronomy and Astrophysical Research
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Cosmology and Gravitation Theories
- Keywords
- DESI, target selection, emission-line galaxies, luminous red galaxies, quasars, standard stars, Dark Energy Survey
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