APOGEE FIRE Mock Catalogs
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The ApogeeFire database context contains a large catalog of mock stars in mock Milky Way-like galaxies, created using the FIRE2 framework (Wetzel et al. 2016).
Mock data for each mock star includes radial velocity, proper motion, chemistry (10 chemical elements are tracked in the simulation), parallax, and photometry in the Gaia bands.
You can query the catalog directly from CasJobs by selecting ApogeeFire from the Context dropdown menu.
You can also use Jupyter notebooks in SciServer Compute to analyze and visualize data from this catalog. For an example, go to SciServer Compute, create a new container, and mount the getting_started Data Volume. Navigate to Astronomy/apogee_fire, then select the IPython notebook apogee_fire_intro.ipynb. Download it and upload it into your Storage/persistent space. Use this example notebook as a starting point for your analysis.
Science
Mock catalogs of sophisticated galaxy simulations provide unique opportunities for observational projects, in particular, the ability to test for or constrain the impact of selection functions, field plans, and algorithms on the scientific inference being made.
One of the most realistic galaxy simulations to date is the Latte simulation suite that uses the FIRE2 framework to produce Milky Way galaxies (Sanderson et al. 2020); these include radial velocity, proper motion, chemistry (10 chemical elements are tracked in the simulation), parallax, and photometry in the Gaia bands, among others.
Because the input physics and the global structure of the model galaxy are known, these mock catalogs provide a rare experimental laboratory to make connections between the resolved stellar populations and global galaxy studies — the key driver in the Milky Way as a Galaxy working group (MWAG). With Nikakthar et al. (2021), the Ananke simulations are updated with APOGEE-2 specific properties (e.g., selection photometry) and are suitable for broad use. With this VAC, we provide the APOGEE-suitable simulations along-side the APOGEE-2 data providing a unique tool for Galactic inferences.
Data Model
There are 73 columns as listed in the original Ananke catalog, plus the following new columns relevant for APOGEE:
- Stellar abundances as they would be measured by APOGEE (10 columns per star)
- Stellar abundance measurement uncertainties (10 columns)
- 2MASS JHKs magnitudes: “observed” magnitudes, intrinsic (unreddened) magnitudes, true (reddened/extincted but not error-convolved) magnitudes, and photometric uncertainties for all stars (12 columns)
- Column applying Ted Mackereth’s APOGEE sky footprint selection function (1 Boolean column)
The final catalog thus contains 106 columns.
You can view the data model through the CasJobs Schema Browser by selecting the ApogeeFire context from the dropdown. More detail on the columns is available from the APOGEE_FIRE_SIM entry of the SDSS data model.