A Map of the Northern Sky: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey in Its First Year

TL;DR

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is a large-scale, ambitious astronomical project that maps a significant portion of the sky with high precision, leading to numerous scientific discoveries in its first year.

Contribution

This paper introduces the SDSS survey, discusses its scientific potential, and highlights key early scientific results and follow-up programs.

Findings

Multiple scientific discoveries in the first year

High-quality data available for the community

Successful international collaboration

Abstract

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is the largest and most ambitious optical CCD survey undertaken to date. It will ultimately map out one quarter of the sky with precision photometry in five bands, high-quality astrometry, and spectra of all galaxies and quasars brighter than certain limiting magnitudes. The scientific potential of the SDSS is enormous and addresses a wide variety of astrophysical key questions. After a proprietary period the reduced and calibrated data are made available to the astronomical community as a whole. The SDSS is run by an international consortium involving universities and research institutions. One of the participating partners is the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg. Already in its first year the SDSS has led to a number of spectacular scientific discoveries. In this paper, we will introduce the SDSS survey, discuss its scientific potential, highlight important science results, and present the Calar Alto key program for SDSS follow-up studies.