The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) is designed to measure the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in the clustering of matter over a larger volume than the combined efforts of all previous spectroscopic surveys of large-scale structure. BOSS uses 1.5 million luminous galaxies as faint as i = 19.9 over 10,000 deg 2 to measure BAO to redshifts z < 0.7. Observations of neutral hydrogen in the Lyα forest in more than 150,000 quasar spectra (g < 22) will constrain BAO over the redshift range 2.15 < z < 3.5. Early results from BOSS include the first detection of the large-scale three-dimensional clustering of the Lyα forest and a strong detection from the Data Release 9 data set of the BAO in the clustering of massive galaxies at an effective redshift z = 0.57. We project that BOSS will yield measurements of the angular diameter distance d A to an accuracy of 1.0% at redshifts z = 0.3 and z = 0.57 and measurements of H (z) to 1.8% and 1.7% at the same redshifts. Forecasts for Lyα forest constraints predict a measurement of an overall dilation factor that scales the highly degenerate D A (z) and H −1 (z) parameters to an accuracy of 1.9% at z ∼ 2.5 when the survey is complete. Here, we provide an overview of the selection of spectroscopic targets, planning of observations, and analysis of data and data quality of BOSS.

We present the KMOS 3D survey, a new integral field survey of over 600 galaxies at 0.7 < z < 2.7 using KMOS at the Very Large Telescope. The KMOS 3D survey utilizes synergies with multi-wavelength ground-and spacebased surveys to trace the evolution of spatially resolved kinematics and star formation from a homogeneous sample over 5 Gyr of cosmic history. Targets, drawn from a mass-selected parent sample from the 3D-HST survey, cover the star formation-stellar mass (M * ) and rest-frame (U − V ) − M * planes uniformly. We describe the selection of targets, the observations, and the data reduction. In the first-year of data we detect Hα emission in 191 M * = 3 × 10 9 -7 × 10 11 M galaxies at z = 0.7-1.1 and z = 1.9-2.7. In the current sample 83% of the resolved galaxies are rotation dominated, determined from a continuous velocity gradient and v rot /σ 0 > 1, implying that the star-forming "main sequence" is primarily composed of rotating galaxies at both redshift regimes. When considering additional stricter criteria, the Hα kinematic maps indicate that at least ∼70% of the resolved galaxies are disk-like systems. Our high-quality KMOS data confirm the elevated velocity dispersions reported in previous integral field spectroscopy studies at z 0.7. For rotation-dominated disks, the average intrinsic velocity dispersion decreases by a factor of two from 50 km s −1 at z ∼ 2.3 to 25 km s −1 at z ∼ 0.9. Combined with existing results spanning z ∼ 0-3, we show that disk velocity dispersions follow an evolution that is consistent with the dependence of velocity dispersion on gas fractions predicted by marginally stable disk theory.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) presents the first spectroscopic data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). This ninth data release (DR9) of the SDSS project includes 535,995 new galaxy spectra (median z ∼ 0.52), 102,100 new quasar spectra (median z ∼ 2.32), and 90,897 new stellar spectra, along with the data presented in previous data releases. These spectra were obtained with the new BOSS spectrograph and were taken between 2009 December and 2011 July. In addition, the stellar parameters pipeline, which determines radial velocities, surface temperatures, surface gravities, and metallicities of stars, has been updated and refined with improvements in temperature estimates for stars with T eff < 5000 K and in metallicity estimates for stars with [Fe/H] > −0.5. DR9 includes new stellar parameters for all stars presented in DR8, including stars from SDSS-I and II, as well as those observed as part of the SDSS-III Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration-2 (SEGUE-2).