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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1101.1559,
title = {The Eighth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Data from SDSS-III},
author = {III collaboration and Hiroaki Aihara and Carlos Allende Prieto and Deokkeun An and Scott F. Anderson and Éric Aubourg and Eduardo Balbinot and Timothy C. Beers and Andreas A. Berlind and Steven J. Bickerton and Dmitry Bizyaev and Michael R. Blanton and John J. Bochanski and Adam S. Bolton and Jo Bovy and W. N. Brandt and J. Brinkmann and Peter J. Brown and Joel R. Brownstein and Nicolas G. Busca and Heather Campbell and Michael A. Carr and Yanmei Chen and Cristina Chiappini and Johan Comparat and Natalia Connolly and Marina Cortes and Rupert A. C. Croft and Antonio J. Cuesta and Luiz N. da Costa and James R. A. Davenport and Kyle Dawson and Saurav Dhital and Anne Ealet and Garrett L. Ebelke and Edward M. Edmondson and Daniel J. Eisenstein and Stephanie Escoffier and Massimiliano Esposito and Michael L. Evans and Xiaohui Fan and Bruno Femení a Castellá and Andreu Font-Ribera and Peter M. Frinchaboy and Jian Ge and Bruce A. Gillespie and G. Gilmore and Jonay I. González Hernández and J. Richard Gott and Andrew Gould and Eva K. Grebel and James E. Gunn and Jean-Christophe Hamilton and Paul Harding and David W. Harris and Suzanne L. Hawley and Frederick R. Hearty and Shirley Ho and David W. Hogg and Jon A. Holtzman and Klaus Honscheid and Naohisa Inada and Inese I. Ivans and Linhua Jiang and Jennifer A. Johnson and Cathy Jordan and Wendell P. Jordan and Eyal A. Kazin and David Kirkby and Mark A. Klaene and G. R. Knapp and Jean-Paul Kneib and C. S. Kochanek and Lars Koesterke and Juna A. Kollmeier and Richard G. Kron and Hubert Lampeitl and Dustin Lang and Jean-Marc Le Goff and Young Sun Lee and Yen-Ting Lin and Daniel C. Long and Craig P. Loomis and Sara Lucatello and Britt Lundgren and Robert H. Lupton and Zhibo Ma and Nicholas MacDonald and Suvrath Mahadevan and Marcio A. G. Maia and Martin Makler and Elena Malanushenko and Viktor Malanushenko and Rachel Mandelbaum and Claudia Maraston and Daniel Margala and Karen L. Masters and Cameron K. McBride and Peregrine M. McGehee and Ian D. McGreer and Brice Ménard and Jordi Miralda-Escudé and Heather L. Morrison and F. Mullally and Demitri Muna and Jeffrey A. Munn and Hitoshi Murayama and Adam D. Myers and Tracy Naugle and Angelo Fausti Neto and Duy Cuong Nguyen and Robert C. Nichol and Robert W. O'Connell and Ricardo L. C. Ogando and Matthew D. Olmstead and Daniel J. Oravetz and Nikhil Padmanabhan and Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille and Kaike Pan and Parul Pandey and Isabelle Pâris and Will J. Percival and Patrick Petitjean and Robert Pfaffenberger and Janine Pforr and Stefanie Phleps and Christophe Pichon and Matthew M. Pieri and Francisco Prada and Adrian M. Price-Whelan and M. Jordan Raddick and Beatriz H. F. Ramos and Céline Reylé and James Rich and Gordon T. Richards and Hans-Walter Rix and Annie C. Robin and Helio J. Rocha-Pinto and Constance M. Rockosi and Natalie A. Roe and Emmanuel Rollinde and Ashley J. Ross and Nicholas P. Ross and Bruno M. Rossetto and Ariel G. Sánchez and Conor Sayres and David J. Schlegel and Katharine J. Schlesinger and Sarah J. Schmidt and Donald P. Schneider and Erin Sheldon and Yiping Shu and Jennifer Simmerer and Audrey E. Simmons and Thirupathi Sivarani and Stephanie A. Snedden and Jennifer S. Sobeck and Matthias Steinmetz and Michael A. Strauss and Alexander S. Szalay and Masayuki Tanaka and Aniruddha R. Thakar and Daniel Thomas and Jeremy L. Tinker and Benjamin M. Tofflemire and Rita Tojeiro and Christy A. Tremonti and Jan Vandenberg and M. Vargas Magaña and Licia Verde and Nicole P. Vogt and David A. Wake and Ji Wang and Benjamin A. Weaver and David H. Weinberg and Martin White and Simon D. M. White and Brian Yanny and Naoki Yasuda and Christophe Yeche and Idit Zehavi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1101.1559},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Astrophysical Journal Supplements, in press (minor updates from submitted version)