Improved Spectrophotometric Calibration of the SDSS-III BOSS Quasar Sample

Abstract

We present a model for spectrophotometric calibration errors in observations of quasars from the third generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) and describe the correction procedure we have developed and applied to this sample. Calibration errors are primarily due to atmospheric differential refraction and guiding offsets during each exposure. The corrections potentially reduce the systematics for any studies of BOSS quasars, including the measurement of baryon acoustic oscillations using the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest. Our model suggests that, on average, the observed quasar flux in BOSS is overestimated by $\sim 19\%$ at 3600 Å and underestimated by $\sim 24\%$ at 10,000 Å. Our corrections for the entire BOSS quasar sample are publicly available.

10 pages, 15 figures

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