Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/224999

Title

The eighth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: first data from SDSS-III

Author(s)

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

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 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 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.

Publication type

Journal article

Source

Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 193, no. 2 (Apr 2011), article no. 29

Publication year

2011

FOR Code(s)

0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences;  0305 Organic Chemistry;  0306 Physical Chemistry (Incl. Structural)

Keyword(s)

Atlases;  Catalogues;  Sloan Digital Sky Survey;  Surveys

Publisher

Institute of Physics Publishing

ISSN

0067-0049

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0067-0049/193/2/29

Copyright

Copyright © 2011 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. The American Astronomical Society does not allow Swinburne Research Bank to archive either the accepted manuscript or the published version of the article. However you can find an earlier version of the full text here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.1559

Peer reviewed