Sdss-iii

Over eight years of operations (SDSS-I, 2000-2005; SDSS-II, 2005-2008), it obtained deep, multi-color images covering more than a quarter of the sky and created 3-dimensional maps containing more than 930,000 galaxies and more than 120,000 quasars. SDSS data have been released to the scientific community and the general public in annual increments,... with the final public data release from SDSS-II occurring in October 2008. That release, Data Release 7, is available through this website. Meanwhile, SDSS is continuing with the Third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), a program of four new surveys using SDSS facilities. SDSS-III began observations in July 2008 and released Data Release 8 in January 2011, Data Release 9 in August 2012, and Data Release 10 in July 2013. SDSS-III will continue operating and releasing data through 2014. Data Release 10 contains the first release of APOGEE infrared Galactic spectroscopy as well as cumulative updates to the BOSS optical extragalactic spectroscopy archive. Data Release 9 contains the first release of BOSS spectroscopy to the public as well as several significant updates to the cumulative SDSS archive. Data Release 8 contains all images from the SDSS telescope - the largest color image of the sky ever made. It also includes measurements for nearly 500 million stars and galaxies, and spectra of nearly two million. All the images, measurements, and spectra are available free online. You can browse through sky images, look up data for individual objects, or search for objects anywhere in the sky based on any criteria. The SDSS used a dedicated 2.5-meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory, New Mexico, equipped with two powerful special-purpose instruments. The 120-megapixel camera imaged 1.5 square degrees of sky at a time, about eight times the area of the full moon. A pair of spectrographs fed by optical fibers measured spectra of (and hence distances to) more than 600 galaxies and quasars in a single observation. A custom-designed set of software pipelines kept pace ...Read More