THE EIGHTH DATA RELEASE OF THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY: FIRST DATA FROM SDSS-III

Abstract

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) started a new phase in August 2008, 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 Ly alpha 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 deg^2 in the Southern Galactic Cap, bringing the total footprint of the SDSS imaging to 14,555 deg^2, 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 Evolution (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 parameters pipeline, which has better determination of metallicity for high metallicity stars.

Keywords

Affiliated Institutions

• Université Paris Cité FR
• University of Wisconsin–Madison US
• Crow Canyon Archaeological Center US
• Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica TW
• University of Utah US
• Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules FR
• University of Virginia US
• Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas BR
• Yale University US
• California Institute of Technology US
• Aix-Marseille Université FR
• Carnegie Observatories US
• Hamilton College US
• National Observatory BR
• Carnegie Mellon University US
• University of Toronto CA
• Universidad de La Laguna ES
• Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory US
• CEA Paris-Saclay FR
• Michigan State University US
• Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul BR
• Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique FR
• University of California, Irvine US
• Valongo Observatory BR
• Pennsylvania State University US
• Institute of Space Sciences ES
• New Mexico State University US
• Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova IT
• University of Florida US
• Centre de physique des particules de Marseille FR
• Trieste Astronomical Observatory IT
• Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives FR
• Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam DE
• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory US
• University of Cambridge GB
• Ewha Womans University KR
• Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics US
• Case Western Reserve University US
• Texas Christian University US
• Infrared Processing and Analysis Center US
• Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe JP
• Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias ES
• Harvard College Observatory US
• University of Chicago US
• Institut de Recherche sur les Lois Fondamentales de l'Univers FR
• Princeton University US
• The Ohio State University US
• Vanderbilt University US
• New York University US
• University of Washington US
• Johns Hopkins University US
• University of Portsmouth GB
• The University of Tokyo JP
• Laboratoire AstroParticule et Cosmologie FR
• Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille FR
• Laboratório Interinstitucional de e-Astronomia BR
• Heidelberg University DE
• National Institute for Astrophysics IT

Related Publications