Press Releases

SDSS-V’s robots turn their eyes to the sky

After twenty-one years of observers loading heavy aluminum plates night after night, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is now seeing the cosmos through robotic eyes. Following more than five years of design, development and construction, survey members worked over the final months of 2021 to install the new robotic Focal Plane System (FPS) on the Sloan Foundation 2.5m Telescope at Apache Point Observatory (APO).

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Museum visitors touch an SDSS plate as part of Tim Fitzpatrick's interactive exhibit

Serving up the Universe on a plate

They may not look like much — just metal disks 80 centimeters (30 inches) across with some etched markings and hundreds of small holes — but round aluminum “plates” like this one from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have been vital to mapping our universe for more than 20 years.

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The Milky Way does the Wave

In results announced this week at the 237th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, scientists from the Sloan Digital Sky survey present the most detailed look yet at the warp of our own Galaxy.

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Untangling the streamers in the Milky Way

Scientists from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Explorer (APOGEE) survey, part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), have presented results that help pinpoint the origin of one of the most recently discovered stellar streams in the Milky Way.

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