Sloan Digital Sky Survey-V: Pioneering Panoptic Spectroscopy
Abstract
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-V (SDSS-V) is pioneering panoptic spectroscopy: it is the first all-sky, multi-epoch, optical-to-infrared spectroscopic survey. SDSS-V is mapping the sky with multi-object spectroscopy (MOS) at telescopes in both hemispheres (the 2.5-m Sloan Foundation Telescope at Apache Point Observatory and the 100-inch du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory), where 500 zonal robotic fiber positioners feed light from a wide-field focal plane to an optical (R, 500 fibers) and a near-infrared (R, 300 fibers) spectrograph. In addition to these MOS capabilities, the survey is pioneering ultra wide-field ( 4000~deg) integral field spectroscopy enabled by a new dedicated facility (LVM-I) at Las Campanas Observatory, where an integral field spectrograph (IFS) with 1801 lenslet-coupled fibers arranged in a 0.5 degree diameter hexagon feeds multiple R4000 optical spectrographs that cover 3600-9800 angstroms. SDSS-V's hardware and multi-year survey strategy are designed to decode the chemo-dynamical history of the Milky Way Galaxy and tackle fundamental open issues in stellar physics in its Milky Way Mapper program, trace the growth physics of supermassive black holes in its Black Hole Mapper program, and understand the self-regulation mechanisms and the chemical enrichment of galactic ecosystems at the energy-injection scale in its Local Volume Mapper program. The survey is well-timed to multiply the scientific output from major all-sky space missions. The SDSS-V MOS programs began robotic operations in 2021; IFS observations began in 2023 with the completion of the LVM-I facility. SDSS-V builds upon decades of heritage of SDSS's pioneering advances in data analysis, collaboration spirit, infrastructure, and product deliverables in astronomy.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2507.06989,
title = {Sloan Digital Sky Survey-V: Pioneering Panoptic Spectroscopy},
author = {Juna A. Kollmeier and Hans-Walter Rix and Conny Aerts and James Aird and Pablo Vera Alfaro and Andrés Almeida and Scott F. Anderson and Óscar Jiménez Arranz and Stefan M. Arseneau and Roberto Assef and Shir Aviram and Catarina Aydar and Carles Badenes and Avrajit Bandyopadhyay and Kat Barger and Robert H. Barkhouser and Franz E. Bauer and Chad Bender and Felipe Besser and Binod Bhattarai and Pavaman Bilgi and Jonathan Bird and Dmitry Bizyaev and Guillermo A. Blanc and Michael R. Blanton and John Bochanski and Jo Bovy and Christopher Brandon and William Nielsen Brandt and Joel R. Brownstein and Johannes Buchner and Joseph N. Burchett and Joleen Carlberg and Andrew R. Casey and Lesly Castaneda-Carlos and Priyanka Chakraborty and Julio Chanamé and Vedant Chandra and Brian Cherinka and Igor Chilingarian and Johan Comparat and Maren Cosens and Kevin Covey and Jeffrey D. Crane and Nicole R. Crumpler and Katia Cunha and Tim Cunningham and Xinyu Dai and Jeremy Darling and James W. Davidson and Megan C. Davis and Nathan De Lee and Niall Deacon and José Eduardo Méndez Delgado and Sebastian Demasi and Mariia Demianenko and Mark Derwent and Elena D'Onghia and Francesco Di Mille and Bruno Dias and John Donor and Niv Drory and Tom Dwelly and Oleg Egorov and Evgeniya Egorova and Kareem El-Badry and Mike Engelman and Mike Eracleous and Xiaohui Fan and Emily Farr and Logan Fries and Peter Frinchaboy and Cynthia S. Froning and Boris T. Gänsicke and Pablo García and Joseph Gelfand and Nicola Pietro Gentile Fusillo and Simon Glover and Katie Grabowski and Eva K. Grebel and Paul J Green and Catherine Grier and Pramod Gupta and Aidan C. Gray and Maximilian Häberle and Patrick B. Hall and Randolph P. Hammond and Keith Hawkins and Albert C. Harding and Viola Hegedűs and Tom Herbst and J. J. Hermes and Paola Rodríguez Hidalgo and Thomas Hilder and David W Hogg and Jon A. Holtzman and Danny Horta and Yang Huang and Hsiang-Chih Hwang and Hector Javier Ibarra-Medel and Julie Imig and Keith Inight and Arghajit Jana and Alexander P. Ji and Paula Jofre and Matt Johns and Jennifer Johnson and James W. Johnson and Evelyn J. Johnston and Amy M Jones and Ivan Katkov and Anton M. Koekemoer and Marina Kounkel and Kathryn Kreckel and Dhanesh Krishnarao and Mirko Krumpe and Nimisha Kumari and Thomas Kupfer and Ivan Lacerna and Chervin Laporte and Sebastien Lepine and Jing Li and Xin Liu and Sarah Loebman and Knox Long and Alexandre Roman-Lopes and Yuxi Lu and Steven Raymond Majewski and Dan Maoz and Kevin A. McKinnon and Ilija Medan and Andrea Merloni and Dante Minniti and Sean Morrison and Natalie Myers and Szabolcs Mészáros and Kirpal Nandra and Prasanta K. Nayak and Melissa K Ness and David L. Nidever and Thomas O'Brien and Micah Oeur and Audrey Oravetz and Daniel Oravetz and Jonah Otto and Gautham Adamane Pallathadka and Povilas Palunas and Kaike Pan and Daniel Pappalardo and Rakesh Pandey and Castalia Alenka Negrete Peñaloza and Marc H. Pinsonneault and Richard W. Pogge and Manuchehr Taghizadeh Popp and Adrian M. Price-Whelan and Nadiia Pulatova and Dan Qiu and Solange Ramirez and Amy Rankine and Claudio Ricci and Jessie C. Runnoe and Sebastian Sanchez and Mara Salvato and Natascha Sattler and Andrew K. Saydjari and Conor Sayres and Kevin C. Schlaufman and Donald P. Schneider and Matthias R. Schreiber and Axel Schwope and Javier Serna and Yue Shen and Cristóbal Sifón and Amrita Singh and Amaya Sinha and Stephen Smee and Ying-Yi Song and Diogo Souto and Keivan G. Stassun and Matthias Steinmetz and Alexander Stone-Martinez and Guy Stringfellow and Amelia Stutz and José and Sá and nchez-Gallego and Jonathan C. Tan and Jamie Tayar and Riley Thai and Ani Thakar and Yuan-Sen Ting and Andrew Tkachenko and Gagik Tovmasian and Benny Trakhtenbrot and José G. Fernández-Trincado and Nicholas Troup and Jonathan Trump and Sarah Tuttle and Roeland P. van der Marel and Sandro Villanova and Jaime Villaseñor and Stefanie Wachter and Zachary Way and Anne-Marie Weijmans and David Weinberg and Adam Wheeler and John Wilson and Alessa I. Wiggins and Tony Wong and Qiaoya Wu and Dominika Wylezalek and Xiang-Xiang Xue and Qian Yang and Nadia Zakamska and Eleonora Zari and Gail Zasowski and Grisha Zeltyn and Catherine Zucker and Carlos G. Román Zúñiga and Rodolfo de J. Zermeño},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.06989},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
76 pages, submitted to the Astronomical Journal