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 […]
Search Results for: SDSS-IV
Data Access
Data Products DR19 contains a wealth of new BOSS optical and APOGEE NIR spectroscopic data. These data were obtained as part of an initial SDSS-V season of plate operations on the 2.5m SDSS telescope at the Apache Point Observatory (APO), as well as early FPS data collected at APO up to July 2023. Note that […]
BHM Data
Previous SDSS data most relevant to BHM Please also see earlier SDSS data releases, including DR16, DR17, and DR18 which e.g., include BHM relevant science and data, from other earlier SDSS programs and releases: New data for BHM in DR19 BOSS spectra SDSS DR19 includes the release of a total of ~380,000 BOSS spectra for […]
Fabry-Perot Interferometer
The APOGEE instrument has long been used for studying radial velocities (RV)s in stellar targets. Through SDSS-IV the standard quoted RV stability floor was approximately 100 m/s. In SDSS-V, there have been three hardware upgrades to improve and monitor RV stability of the APOGEE instrument. The first is the introduction of octagonal fibers into the […]
DR18 BHM Caveats
Optical Spectra Caveats As with any dataset, there are several caveats to watch out for when using the optical spectra released by SDSS. Some affect only a few spectra or a few data columns, while some others have wider impacts. Caveats are in many cases specific to the release and will be corrected in an […]
DR18 BHM Targeting Cartons
Scope This page provides a complete list of all BHM-led target cartons that have been considered within SDSS-V, up to and including the DR18 data release. The cartons are grouped by a ‘targeting generation’ identifier. List of targeting generations The table below provides a list of all distinct targeting generations presented in this data release. […]
Data Release Publications
With each data release, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey collaboration has published a Data Release paper, which describes the data, the data acquisition process, and other details of the project. The most current public data release of the SDSS-V is Data Release 19 (DR19), which was released in July 2025. Details of DR19 are described […]
Technical Publications
These technical papers describe various aspects of the technical operation of the original Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the SDSS-II’s SEGUE and Supernova surveys, the SDSS-III BOSS, APOGEE, SEGUE-2, and MARVELS surveys, the SDSS-IV eBOSS, APOGEE-2 and MaNGA surveys, and the current SDSS-V mapper programs. This list of papers is sorted by the phase of SDSS […]
DR18 Plates
Plates in the SDSS context are round pieces of aluminum with holes in it to plug the fibers that collect the light from each astrophysical object. For many years in SDSS we have used this plug plates to perform our observations. These plates need to be designed and drilled with a few months in advance […]
DR18 Using Bitmasks
A bit mask uses the bits in the binary representation of an integer as “toggles” to indicate whether certain conditions are met. For a more general introduction to this concept, consult Wikipedia or other online resources on the subject. Within the SDSS, the most common use of a bitmask is to indicate the status of […]