SDSS DR16 QSO Based MgII/FeII Absorber Catalogue

Normalized quasar spectra with MgII absorber systems. Inset shows the convolved array. For more details, see Fig 1 in paper.

Redshift distribution of DR16 quasars and MgII absorbers.
For more details see Fig 3 in paper.

Observed and completeness corrected EW distribution of
MgII absorbers. For more details see Fig 8 in paper.

Here we make publicly available the MgII (Mg+) Absorber catalogue based on ~ 1 million quasar spectra from the final SDSS quasar sample (DR16), including all spectra observed through SDSS-IV. The automated absorption detection pipeline is fully described in Anand et al. 2021. There are ~ 160,000 MgII absorbers together with ~ 70,000 FeII (Fe+) confirmed systems in the catalogue. The completeness and purity both are very high for our catalogue. Also, the majority of absorbers have high S/N.

To see a short schematic of our absorber detection pipeline Click here

To have a quick look into the contents of the files copy this jupyter notebook.

If you're using these catalogues, please cite our paper Anand et al. 2021 [arXiv] [ADS]

Want a very quick look into the paper (without getting lost into the technical details 😄), see this MPA highlight or astrobites summary.

In case you have questions, please feel free to reach me at abhijeet [AT] mpa-garching [DOT] mpg [DOT] de

Thank you very much,

Abhijeet Anand

MPA, Garching


Catalogue Description

There are two catalogues:

Datafiles that contain this catalogue can be downloaded in HDF5 or FITS format. Below are the datafiles and description of the catalogue:

README file (available as .md, .html) that describes the catalogue is:


Datafiles that contain this catalogue can be downloaded in HDF5 or FITS format. Below are the datafiles and description of the catalogue:

README file (available as .md, .html) that describes the catalogue is: