SDSS makes heavy use of the concept of a bitmask in spectroscopic target flags and other contexts. For the actual bit values for all SDSS flags, see the lists below. More detailed descriptions of the targeting bitmasks for the completed optical surveys and infrared surveys can be found in the DR17 release documentation. The page […]
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FITS Files
Most of the numerical SDSS data is stored in the form of FITS files. These files can contain both images and binary data tables in a well-defined format. FITS files can be read and written with many programming languages, but the most common ones used by SDSS are IDL and Python. IDL The Goddard utilities contain tools for reading and writing […]
Parameter files
Parameter files are ASCII files with the extension .par. They are extensively used in SDSS data for storing moderate amounts of data in a form that is both human and machine readable. Parameter files are sometimes informally called ‘Yanny’ files, or, more rarely, ‘FTCL’ files. Originally, they were designed to be written and read by the […]
Open Fiber Programs
The SDSS-V focal plane fiber-positioning hardware and survey strategy were designed around the core science cases, whose target densities — and relative infrared vs optical needs — vary dramatically across the sky, from Baade’s window to high-latitudes. This inevitably leaves unallocated (or “open”) fibers. In response to this SDSS-V opened a (series of) collaboration-internal “open fiber […]
SDSS Python Template
Since SDSS has a goal of all new software being written in Python, a Python template is provided as a starting point and to encourage best practices. Extensive documentation is available on readthedocs and the source code is managed on GitHub. Note that while this package is referred to as sdss-python-template, the only part of […]
Software Packages
A number of software packages have been developed to aid in carrying out SDSS surveys and processing the data. Here we briefly describe the purpose and scope of some of these core software packages. The Pipeline packages are excluded from coverage here and can be located on the Pipelines page. Many packages have their own […]
Completed Spectroscopic Surveys
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey started routine observing in 2000, and since then has completed through four generations of surveys. The current generation is the Fifth Generation of Sloan Digital Sky Surveys (SDSS-V), and the data of its mapper programs can be found in Data Release 19. The following is a list of all the […]
Scope
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey started operations with its first light in 1998, and has been collecting data ever since, first with an imaging camera, and later with spectrographs. Below we list the total number of stars, galaxies, and quasars for which SDSS spectra are available, as well as the total number of spectra that […]
Black Hole Mapper (BHM)
BHM OVERVIEW: The Black Hole Mapper in SDSS-V emphasizes the study of quasars and other active galactic nuclei (AGN), as among Universe’s most luminous objects, powered by accretion onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs), and co-evolving via feedback with the host galaxies in which they reside. BHM exploits – with order(s) of magnitude advances – two […]
BOSS Pipeline
The SDSS Early Data Release (EDR) paper is the original resource for understanding the processing and data products from the SDSS, describing the pipelines and spectroscopic data products. Successive data release papers: DR1, DR2, DR3, DR4, DR5, DR6, DR7, DR8, DR9, DR10, DR11, DR12, DR13, DR14, DR15, DR16, DR17, and DR18 describe changes to the optical spectroscopic data reduction […]