Astronomers have discovered that many small galaxies hosting active supermassive black holes have their stars and gas spinning out of sync – sometimes in completely opposite directions.
News
This page shows our official press releases announcing discoveries during the current fifth phase of the SDSS. For more discoveries, see the press releases of the previous generations of the SDSS, listed at the bottom of this page.
Spinning black holes reveal how they grew
A new study from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has revealed a surprising truth about black holes: they spin faster than previously thought, revealing a more orderly early universe than we ever suspected.
Robotic SDSS Telescopes Begin a New Era in Mapping the Interstellar Regions of the Milky Way
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is embarking on its most innovative spectroscopic survey yet of our Milky Way: creating a comprehensive map of the interstellar material in our Galaxy.
SDSS astronomers observe theoretically predicted effect in the remnants of dead stars
A student-led team has observed that the mass-radius relation of white dwarf stars, a type of star which is so dense that they are supported by quantum mechanical effects, depends on the temperature of the star. Scientists have long searched for this subtle effect, detected here for the first time using a method from General Relativity – along with the largest catalog of white dwarf data of its kind.
Read MoreSDSS astronomers observe theoretically predicted effect in the remnants of dead stars
Astronomers find quasar winds speeding up
A team of astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has used eight years of careful, constant observations to discover unexpected changes in the winds surrounding a distant black hole.
The “Barbenheimer Star”: Evidence for Spectacular Nucleosynthesis in the Early Universe
Astronomy’s new blockbuster is now playing in New Orleans. Astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have discovered evidence for what they call the “Barbenheimer Star” – an enormous ancient star that exploded in a way previously thought impossible, resulting in an unusual pattern of elemental ashes that left behind a trail of evidence still visible billions of years later.
Read MoreThe “Barbenheimer Star”: Evidence for Spectacular Nucleosynthesis in the Early Universe
Mapping Everything Everywhere All At Once
The newest mapmaking effort of the long-running Sloan Digital Sky Survey has begun. The Local Volume Mapper (LVM) Instrument has seen first science light.
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.
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.
Next-gen astronomical survey makes its first observations toward a new understanding of the cosmos
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s fifth generation collected its very first observations of the cosmos at 1:47 a.m. on October 24, 2020. As the world’s first all-sky time-domain spectroscopic survey, SDSS-V will provide groundbreaking insight into the formation and evolution of galaxies—like like our own Milky Way—and of the supermassive black holes that lurk at their centers.
Older Press Releases
For a list of press releases from previous generations of the SDSS, see the lists on their project websites: