Image quality information

Introduction

Here we compile some other quantifications about the quality and nature of the SDSS images.

Quality flags

Most of the discussion below covers the overall quality of SDSS data. In order to evaluate the quality of individual fields, please see our description of image quality flags.

Seeing and Sky Brightness

Seeing and sky brightness affect both the completeness of the SDSS and the accuracy of its star/galaxy separation. Seeing is defined here as the effective width of the point spread function (see section 4.3 of the EDR paper, on the SDSS DR7 site). The following plots show the fraction of DR1 fields exceeding a given seeing and sky brightness.

Seeing	Sky brightness

These are the r-band quartiles:

Parameter	Lower quartile	Median	Upper quartile
PSF width	1.58"	1.43"	1.30"
Sky brightness	20.70 mag	20.86 mag	21.03 mag

Completeness of the SDSS photometric survey

We have determined the completeness of the SDSS photometric survey by comparing the number of objects found by the SDSS pipeline to the number found by the COMBO-17 survey in a region of sky that has been scanned by both surveys, and in a second comparison with data from observations of a CNOC survey field. While the comparison was carried out for DR1 data, the DR2/DR3 data are not significantly different.

Here we show details for the comparison with COMBO-17 data. The region of sky used here for calibration is COMBO-17's S11 field, which is covered by run 1140, camcol 5, fields 151-154 and run 1231 camcol 5 and 6, fields 42-45.

The sky brightness in over half the SDSS is better than it is in these fields, and the seeing in most of the survey is better than it is in one of these runs, so the completeness in most of the survey should be better than what is shown here. See the seeing and sky brightness table for COMBO-17/SDSS overlap below.

In the following plots, PSF r-band magnitudes are used for stars, and Petrosian r-band magnitudes are used for galaxies.

Which objects	Number counts	Fractional completeness
Stars
Galaxies

Note that COMBO-17's multicolor classification starts to become incomplete for stars at about one magnitude fainter than SDSS. Therefore, the SDSS 50% completeness is slightly brighter than indicated by this plot.

The number of objects above the 5-sigma detection threshold depends heavily on the seeing and sky brightness in a given field. The following table summarizes the seeing and sky brightness in the overlap region.

run	camcol	field	seeing ["]	sky brightness [mag/sq. "]
1140	5	151	1.293	20.8210
1140	5	152	1.273	20.8210
1140	5	153	1.280	20.8150
1140	5	154	1.331	20.8060
1231	5	42	1.941	20.7670
1231	5	43	2.051	20.7670
1231	5	44	2.052	20.7700
1231	5	45	2.011	20.7710
1231	6	42	2.010	20.7740
1231	6	43	2.113	20.7750
1231	6	44	2.122	20.7750
1231	5	45	2.033	20.7780

Comparing with the seeing and sky brightness statistics, most of the SDSS fields have better seeing than this overlap region. Over half of the fields have lower sky levels. Therefore, the completeness in most of the survey should be better than what is shown here

Star/galaxy separation

The SDSS photometric pipeline performs a morphological star/galaxy separation. The quality of this separation is therefore intimately related to the seeing and sky brightness. Photo's classifications have been tested against those of the COMBO survey (which effectively uses low-resolution spectroscopy for star/galaxy separation) in a region of the sky that both surveys have scanned. While the comparison was carried out for DR1 data, the DR2/DR3 data are not significantly different.

We assess the quality of the SDSS star/galaxy separation using the COMBO S11 field which corresponds to SDSS run 1140 camcol 5 fields 151-154, run 1231 fields 42-25 camcols 5-6. We assume the COMBO classification is correct and determine which fraction of SDSS-detected objects is classified identically by SDSS.

Stars	Galaxies

To see how the seeing and sky brightness of these fields compare to the rest of the SDSS, look at the seeing and sky brightness in the SDSS/COMBO overlap region.