Strong Emission Line H ii Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. I. Catalog of DR1 Objects with Oxygen Abundances from T e Measurements

We present the first edition of the {S}DSS {H}II-galaxies with {O}xygenabundances {C}atalog (SHOC), which is a listing of strong emission-linegalaxies (ELGs) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Oxygen abundanceshave been obtained with the classic Te-method. We describe the methodexploiting the SDSS database to construct this sample. The selection proceduresare described and discussed in detail, as well as some problems encountered inthe process of deriving reliable emission line parameters. The method wasapplied to the SDSS Data Release 1 (DR1). We present 612 SDSS emission-linegalaxies (624 separate SDSS targets in total), for which the oxygen abundances12+log(O/H) have r.m.s. uncertainties <0.20 dex. The subsample of 263 ELGs havean uncertainty <0.10 dex, while 459 ELGs have an uncertainty <0.15 dex. Thecatalog includes the main parameters of all selected ELGs, the intensities andequivalent widths of hydrogen and oxygen emission lines, as well as oxygenabundances with their uncertainties. The information on the presence ofWolf-Rayet blue and/or red bumps in 109 galaxies is also included. With the useof combined g,r,i SDSS images we performed visual morphological classificationof all SHOC galaxies. 461 galaxies (~75%) are classified as confident orprobable blue compact galaxies (BCG/BCG?), 78 as irregular ones, 20 as lowsurface brightness galaxies (LSBG), 10 as obviously interacting and 43 asspiral galaxies. In creating the catalog, 30 narrow line AGN and 69 LINERs werealso identified; these are also presented apart of the main catalog. We outlinebriefly the content of the catalog, and the prospects of its use forstatistical studies of the star formation and chemical evolution issues. Someof these studies will be presented in the forthcoming paper (abridged).Comment: 64 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication and scheduled for the ApJS August 2004, v153 issue. Some figures were bitmapped to reduce the siz