Configuration¶

You will normally want to establish your local configuration and specify which remote data you want to work with using some environment variables:

BOSS_LOCAL_ROOT: The top-level directory where all downloaded data files will be locally mirrored. Make sure there is enough space here for the files you plan to use locally. You might want to exclude this directory from your backups since it can get large and is already backed up remotely.
BOSS_DATA_URL: The top-level URL for downloading data, possibly including account information for accessing proprietary data.
BOSS_SAS_PATH: The top-level path of the data you want to work with, which will normally begin with “/sas”.
BOSS_REDUX_VERSION: The pipeline reconstruction version that you want to work with.

If any of these variables is not specified, defaults appropriate for access the public Data Release 12 will be used and any downloaded data will be saved to a temporary local directory. At a minimum, you should normally specify a permanent location for storing local data by setting the BOSS_LOCAL_ROOT environment variable.

The default settings of the other environment variables are equivalent to (in bash):

export BOSS_DATA_URL=http://dr12.sdss3.org
export BOSS_SAS_PATH=/sas/dr12/boss
export BOSS_REDUX_VERSION=v5_7_0

However these variables are set, the following unix shell command should always print a valid URL that displays a directory listing in any browser:

echo $BOSS_DATA_URL/$BOSS_SAS_PATH/boss/spectro/redux/$BOSS_REDUX_VERSION/

The sections below describe how to access sources of data other than the default public DR12 release.

SEQUELS Data¶

Quoting from here:

For BOSS, the main galaxy clustering survey is entirely contained in v5_7_0. After the main survey was finished, ancillary programs continued — these were processed as v5_7_2, which is the same code but a different processing version number to keep the datasets distinct. The SEQUELS ancillary program has plates in both v5_7_0 and v5_7_2.

To access SEQUELS data processed as v5_7_2, use:

export BOSS_SAS_PATH=/sas/dr12/boss
export BOSS_REDUX_VERSION=v5_7_2
export BOSS_DATA_URL=http://dr12.sdss3.org

SDSS-I/II Spectra¶

Some spectra from plates 0266 - 3006 are included in the public DR12 release and available under pipeline reduction versions 26, 103 and 104. To access version 26, for example, use:

export BOSS_SAS_PATH=/sas/dr12/sdss
export BOSS_REDUX_VERSION=26
export BOSS_DATA_URL=http://dr12.sdss3.org

eBOSS Proprietary Data¶

Proprietary data from the eBOSS survey is password protected but still accessible via bossdata. Contact the authors for for details if you are an SDSS-IV collaborator.