The DESI Survey Validation: Results from Visual Inspection of Bright Galaxies, Luminous Red Galaxies, and Emission Line Galaxies
Creators: name: Lan, Ting-Wen
name: Tojeiro, R.
name: Armengaud, E.
name: Prochaska, J. Xavier
name: Davis, T. M.
name: Alexander, David M.
name: Raichoor, A.
name: Zhou, Rongpu
name: Yeche, Christophe
name: Balland, C.
name: BenZvi, S.
name: Berti, A.
name: Canning, R.
name: Carr, A.
name: Chittenden, H.
name: Cole, S.
name: Cousinou, M. -C.
name: Dawson, K.
name: Dey, Biprateep
name: Douglass, K.
name: Edge, A.
name: Escoffier, S.
name: Glanville, A.
name: Gontcho, S. Gontcho A
name: Guy, J.
name: Hahn, C.
name: Howlett, C.
name: Hwang, Ho Seong
name: Jiang, L.
name: Kovacs, A.
name: Mezcua, M.
name: Moore, S.
name: Nadathur, S.
name: Oh, M.
name: Parkinson, D.
name: Rocher, A.
name: Ross, A. J.
name: Ruhlmann-Kleider, V.
name: Sabiu, C. G.
name: Said, K.
name: Saulder, C.
name: Sierra-Porta, D.
name: Weiner, B.
name: Yu, J.
name: Zarrouk, P.
name: Zhang, Y.
name: Zou, H.
name: Ahlen, S.
name: Bailey, S.
name: Brooks, D.
name: Cooper, A. P.
name: de la Macorra, A.
name: Dey, A.
name: Dhungana, G.
name: Doel, P.
name: Eftekharzadeh, S.
name: Fanning, K.
name: Font-Ribera, A.
name: Garrison, L.
name: Gaztanaga, E.
name: Kehoe, R.
name: Kisner, T.
name: Kremin, A.
name: Landriau, M.
name: Guillou, L. Le
name: Levi, Michael E.
name: Magneville, C.
name: Meisner, Aaron M.
name: Miquel, R.
name: Moustakas, J.
name: Myers, Adam D.
name: Newman, Jeffrey A.
name: Nie, J. D.
name: Palanque-Delabrouille, N.
name: Percival, W. J.
name: Poppett, C.
name: Prada, F.
name: Schubnell, M.
name: Tarle, Gregory
name: Weaver, B. A.
name: Zhang, K.
name: Zhou, Zhimin
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Survey has obtained a set of spectroscopic measurements of galaxies to validate the final survey design and target selections. To assist in these tasks, we visually inspect (VI) DESI spectra of approximately 2,500 bright galaxies, 3,500 luminous red galaxies (LRGs), and 10,000 emission line galaxies (ELGs), to obtain robust redshift identifications. We then utilize the VI redshift information to characterize the performance of the DESI operation. Based on the VI catalogs, our results show that the final survey design yields samples of bright galaxies, LRGs, and ELGs with purity greater than $99\%$. Moreover, we demonstrate that the precision of the redshift measurements is approximately 10 km/s for bright galaxies and ELGs and approximately 40 km/s for LRGs. The average redshift accuracy is within 10 km/s for the three types of galaxies. The VI process also helps improve the quality of the DESI data by identifying spurious spectral features introduced by the pipeline. Finally, we show examples of unexpected real astronomical objects, such as Ly$α$ emitters and strong lensing candidates, identified by VI. These results demonstrate the importance and utility of visually inspecting data from incoming and upcoming surveys, especially during their early operation phases.
description: 22 pages, 14 figures, 3 tables, one of a suite of 8 papers detailing targeting for DESI. ApJ accepted version with minor textual updates