The Stripe 82 Massive Galaxy Project – II. Stellar mass completeness of spectroscopic galaxy samples from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey

Abstract

This work was supported by World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI Initiative), MEXT, Japan. RT acknowledges support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council via an Ernest Rutherford Fellowship (grant number ST/K004719/1). Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Energy Office of Science.The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) has collected spectra for over one million galaxies at 0.15  11.6 only in the narrow redshift range z = [0.51, 0.61]. The low-redshift LOWZ sample is 80 per cent complete at log 10(M*/M⊙) > 11.6 for z = [0.15, 0.43]. To construct mass complete samples at lower masses, spectroscopic samples need to be significantly supplemented by photometric redshifts. This work will enable future studies to better utilize the BOSS samples for galaxy-formation science.Peer reviewe