The Hobby-Eberly Telescope VIRUS Parallel Survey (HETVIPS)

Gregory R. Zeimann, Maya H. Debski, Donald P. Schneider, William P. Bowman, Niv Drory, Gary J. Hill, Hanshin Lee, Phillip MacQueen, Matthew Shetrone

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) VIRUS Parallel Survey (HETVIPS) is a blind spectroscopic program that sparsely covers approximately two-thirds of the celestial sphere and consists of roughly 252 million fiber spectra. The spectra were taken in parallel mode with the Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) instrument when the HET was observing a primary target with other HET facility instruments. VIRUS can simultaneously obtain approximately 35,000 spectra covering 3470-5540 Å at a spectral resolution of ≈800. Although the vast majority of these spectra cover blank sky, we used the Pan-STARRS1 Data Release 2 Stacked Catalog to identify objects encompassed in the HETVIPS pointings and extract their spectra. This paper presents the first HETVIPS data release, containing 493,012 flux-calibrated spectra obtained through 2023 March 31, as well as a description of the data processing technique. Each of the object spectra were classified, resulting in a catalog of 74,196 galaxies, 4,087 quasars, 259,396 stars, and 154,543 unknown sources.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number14
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume966
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - May 1 2024

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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