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, Eric 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, William Nielsen Brandt, Jonathan V. Brinkmann, Peter J. Brown, Joel R. Brownstein, Nicolas G. Busca, Heather C. CampbellMichael A. Carr, Yanmei Chen, Cristina Chiappini, Johan Comparat, Natalia Connolly, Marina Cortes, Rupert A. C. Croft, Antonio J. Cuesta, Luiz Alberto Nicolaci da Costa, James R. A. Davenport, Kyle S. Dawson, Saurav Dhital, Anne Ealet, Garrett L. Ebelke, Edward M. Edmondson, Daniel J. Eisenstein, Stephanie Escoffier, Massimiliano Esposito, Michael L. Evans, Xiaohui Fan, Bruno Femenia Castella, Andreu Font-Ribera, Peter M. Frinchaboy, Jian Ge, Bruce A. Gillespie, G. Gilmore, Jonay I. Gonzalez Hernandez, John 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, Gillian R. Knapp, Jean-Paul Kneib, Christopher 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 Masters, Cameron K. McBride, Peregrine M. McGehee, Ian D. McGreer, Brice Menard, Jordi Miralda-Escude, Heather L. Morrison, Fergal Mullally, Demitri Muna, Jeffrey A. Munn, Hitoshi Murayama, Adam D. Myers, Tracy Naugle, Angelo Fausti Neto, Duy Cuong Nguyen, Robert 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 Paris, Will Percival, Patrick Petitjean, Robert Pfaffenberger, Janine Pforr, Stefanie Phleps, Christophe Pichon, Matthew Pieri, Francisco Prada, Adrian M. Price-Whelan, M. Jordan Raddick, Beatriz H. F. Ramos, Celine Reyle, James Rich, Gordon T. Richards, Hans-Walter Rix, Annie C. Robin, Helio J. Rocha-Pinto, Constance M. Rockosi, Natalie A. Roe, Emmanuel Rollinde, Ashley Ross, Nicholas P. Ross, Bruno Ross, Ariel G. Sanchez, Conor Sayres, David J. Schlegel, Katharine J. Schlesinger, Sarah J. Schmidt, Donald P. Schneider, Erin S. 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, Mariana Vargas Magana, Licia Verde, Nicole P. Vogt, David A. Wake, Ji Wang, Benjamin A. 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
Pages (from-to)29
JournalThe Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
Volume193
Issue number2
Early online date28 Mar 2011
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2011

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