The eighth data release of the sloan digital sky survey: First data from SDSS-III

Hiroaki Aihara, Carlos Allende Prieto, Deokkeun An, Scott F. Anderson, Éric Aubourg, Eduardo Balbinot, Timothy C. Beers, Andreas A. Berlind, Steven J. Bickerton, Dmitry Bizyaev, Michael R. Blanton, John J. Bochanski, Adam S. Bolton, Jo Bovy, W. N. Brandt, J. Brinkmann, Peter J. Brown, Joel R. Brownstein, Nicolas G. Busca, Heather CampbellMichael A. Carr, Yanmei Chen, Cristina Chiappini, Johan Comparat, Natalia Connolly, Marina Cortes, Rupert A.C. Croft, Antonio J. Cuesta, Luiz N. Da Costa, James R.A. Davenport, Kyle Dawson, Saurav Dhital, Anne Ealet, Garrett L. Ebelke, Edward M. Edmondson, Daniel J. Eisenstein, Stephanie Escoffier, Massimiliano Esposito, Michael L. Evans, Xiaohui Fan, Bruno Femenía Castell, Andreu Font-Ribera, Peter M. Frinchaboy, Jian Ge, Bruce A. Gillespie, G. Gilmore, Jonay I. Gonzlez Hernndez, J. Richard Gott, Andrew Gould, Eva K. Grebel, James E. Gunn, Jean Christophe Hamilton, Paul Harding, David W. Harris, Suzanne L. Hawley, Frederick R. Hearty, Shirley Ho, David W. Hogg, Jon A. Holtzman, Klaus Honscheid, Naohisa Inada, Inese I. Ivans, Linhua Jiang, Jennifer A. Johnson, Cathy Jordan, Wendell P. Jordan, Eyal A. Kazin, David Kirkby, Mark A. Klaene, G. R. Knapp, Jean Paul Kneib, C. S. Kochanek, Lars Koesterke, Juna A. Kollmeier, Richard G. Kron, Hubert Lampeitl, Dustin Lang, Jean Marc Le Goff, Young Sun Lee, Yen Ting Lin, Daniel C. Long, Craig P. Loomis, Sara Lucatello, Britt Lundgren, Robert H. Lupton, Zhibo Ma, Nicholas MacDonald, Suvrath Mahadevan, Marcio A.G. Maia, Martin Makler, Elena Malanushenko, Viktor Malanushenko, Rachel Mandelbaum, Claudia Maraston, Daniel Margala, Karen L. Masters, Cameron K. McBride, Peregrine M. McGehee, Ian D. McGreer, Brice Ménard, Jordi Miralda-Escudé, Heather L. Morrison, F. Mullally, Demitri Muna, Jeffrey A. Munn, Hitoshi Murayama, Adam D. Myers, Tracy Naugle, Angelo Fausti Neto, Duy Cuong Nguyen, Robert C. Nichol, Robert W. O'Connell, Ricardo L.C. Ogando, Matthew D. Olmstead, Daniel J. Oravetz, Nikhil Padmanabhan, Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille, Kaike Pan, Parul Pandey, Isabelle Pris, Will J. Percival, Patrick Petitjean, Robert Pfaffenberger, Janine Pforr, Stefanie Phleps, Christophe Pichon, Matthew M. Pieri, Francisco Prada, Adrian M. Price-Whelan, M. Jordan Raddick, Beatriz H.F. Ramos, Céline Reylé, James Rich, Gordon T. Richards, Hans Walter Rix, Annie C. Robin, Helio J. Rocha-Pinto, Constance M. Rockosi, Natalie A. Roe, Emmanuel Rollinde, Ashley J. Ross, Nicholas P. Ross, Bruno M. Rossetto, Ariel G. Snchez, Conor Sayres, David J. Schlegel, Katharinej Schlesinger, Sarah J. Schmidt, Donald P. Schneider, Erin Sheldon, Yiping Shu, Jennifer Simmerer, Audrey E. Simmons, Thirupathi Sivarani, Stephanie A. Snedden, Jennifer S. Sobeck, Matthias Steinmetz, Michael A. Strauss, Alexander S. Szalay, Masayuki Tanaka, Aniruddha R. Thakar, Daniel Thomas, Jeremy L. Tinker, Benjamin M. Tofflemire, Rita Tojeiro, Christy A. Tremonti, Jan Vandenberg, M. Vargas Magãa, Licia Verde, Nicole P. Vogt, David A. Wake, Ji Wang, Benjamina Weaver, David H. Weinberg, Martin White, Simon D.M. White, Brian Yanny, Naoki Yasuda, Christophe Yeche, Idit Zehavi

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Abstract

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) started a new phase in 2008 August, with new instrumentation and new surveys focused on Galactic structure and chemical evolution, measurements of the baryon oscillation feature in the clustering of galaxies and the quasar Lyα forest, and a radial velocity search for planets around 8000 stars. This paper describes the first data release of SDSS-III (and the eighth counting from the beginning of the SDSS). The release includes five-band imaging of roughly 5200 deg2 in the southern Galactic cap, bringing the total footprint of the SDSS imaging to 14,555 deg2, or over a third of the Celestial Sphere. All the imaging data have been reprocessed with an improved sky-subtraction algorithm and a final, self-consistent photometric recalibration and flat-field determination. This release also includes all data from the second phase of the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE-2), consisting of spectroscopy of approximately 118,000 stars at both high and low Galactic latitudes. All the more than half a million stellar spectra obtained with the SDSS spectrograph have been reprocessed through an improved stellar parameter pipeline, which has better determination of metallicity for high-metallicity stars.

Original languageEnglish
Article number29
JournalAstrophysical Journal, Supplement Series
Volume193
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2011

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We are grateful to the Chandra team for their operation of the satellite and especially to Herman Marshall and Dave Huenemoerder for discussions regarding calibration and data analysis. This research has made use of data obtained through the HEASARC on-line service, provided by NASA/GSFC. This work is based in part on data obtained for the Guaranteed Time Team by the NASA-CNES-CSA FUSE mission operated by Johns Hopkins University. Financial support to US participants has been provided by NASA contract NAS5-32985. G. Kriss acknowledges additional support from NASA LTSA grant NAGW-4443. T. J. Turner acknowledges support from LTSA grant NAG5-7538. D. M. Crenshaw and S. Kraemer acknowledge support from grant NAG5-4103.

Keywords

  • atlases
  • catalogs
  • surveys

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