CaltechAUTHORS
Published April 2008 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

The sixth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Fermilab
  • 2. ROR icon Columbia University
  • 3. ROR icon University of Wyoming
  • 4. ROR icon The University of Texas at Austin
  • 5. ROR icon New Mexico State University
  • 6. ROR icon University of Washington
  • 7. ROR icon Princeton University
  • 8. ROR icon Max Planck Institute for Astronomy
  • 9. ROR icon Liverpool John Moores University
  • 10. ROR icon Johns Hopkins University
  • 11. ROR icon South African Radio Astronomy Observatory
  • 12. ROR icon University of Cape Town
  • 13. ROR icon Michigan State University
  • 14. ROR icon New York University
  • 15. ROR icon University of Pennsylvania
  • 16. ROR icon Centre for Astrophysics of the University of Porto
  • 17. ROR icon University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
  • 18. ROR icon Institute of Space Sciences
  • 19. ROR icon Wayne State University
  • 20. ROR icon University of Arizona
  • 21. ROR icon Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
  • 22. ROR icon Eötvös Loránd University
  • 23. ROR icon University of Chicago
  • 24. ROR icon University of Tokyo
  • 25. ROR icon Space Telescope Science Institute
  • 26. ROR icon University of Warwick
  • 27. ROR icon Swinburne University of Technology
  • 28. ROR icon University of Basel
  • 29. ROR icon Heidelberg University
  • 30. ROR icon York University
  • 31. ROR icon Case Western Reserve University
  • 32. ROR icon Lowell Observatory
  • 33. ROR icon Catholic University of America
  • 34. ROR icon United States Naval Research Laboratory
  • 35. ROR icon Institute for Advanced Study
  • 36. ROR icon National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
  • 37. ROR icon The Ohio State University
  • 38. ROR icon New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
  • 39. ROR icon American Museum of Natural History
  • 40. ROR icon University of Sussex
  • 41. ROR icon University of California, Santa Cruz
  • 42. ROR icon Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
  • 43. ROR icon Nagoya University
  • 44. ROR icon Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
  • 45. ROR icon University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
  • 46. ROR icon University of Edinburgh
  • 47. ROR icon Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  • 48. ROR icon University of Portsmouth
  • 49. ROR icon Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • 50. ROR icon Korea Institute for Advanced Study
  • 51. ROR icon University of Hawaii at Manoa
  • 52. ROR icon Drexel University
  • 53. ROR icon Rochester Institute of Technology
  • 54. ROR icon Stanford University
  • 55. ROR icon Pennsylvania State University
  • 56. ROR icon University of Valparaíso
  • 57. ROR icon University of Zurich
  • 58. ROR icon Austin Peay State University
  • 59. ROR icon Adler Planetarium
  • 60. ROR icon Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • 61. ROR icon Carnegie Observatories
  • 62. ROR icon University of Cambridge
  • 63. ROR icon Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
  • 64. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 65. ROR icon Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics
  • 66. ROR icon National Center for Supercomputing Applications

Abstract

This paper describes the Sixth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. With this data release, the imaging of the northern Galactic cap is now complete. The survey contains images and parameters of roughly 287 million objects over 9583 deg^2, including scans over a large range of Galactic latitudes and longitudes. The survey also includes 1.27 million spectra of stars, galaxies, quasars, and blank sky (for sky subtraction) selected over 7425 deg^2. This release includes much more stellar spectroscopy than was available in previous data releases and also includes detailed estimates of stellar temperatures, gravities, and metallicities. The results of improved photometric calibration are now available, with uncertainties of roughly 1% in g, r, i, and z, and 2% in u, substantially better than the uncertainties in previous data releases. The spectra in this data release have improved wavelength and flux calibration, especially in the extreme blue and extreme red, leading to the qualitatively better determination of stellar types and radial velocities. The spectrophotometric fluxes are now tied to point-spread function magnitudes of stars rather than fiber magnitudes. This gives more robust results in the presence of seeing variations, but also implies a change in the spectrophotometric scale, which is now brighter by roughly 0.35 mag. Systematic errors in the velocity dispersions of galaxies have been fixed, and the results of two independent codes for determining spectral classifications and redshifts are made available. Additional spectral outputs are made available, including calibrated spectra from individual 15 minute exposures and the sky spectrum subtracted from each exposure. We also quantify a recently recognized underestimation of the brightnesses of galaxies of large angular extent due to poor sky subtraction; the bias can exceed 0.2 mag for galaxies brighter than r = 14 mag.

Additional Information

© 2008 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2007 July 23; accepted 2007 October 18. Funding for the SDSS and SDSS-II has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, the Max Planck Society, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The SDSSWeb site is http://www.sdss.org/. The SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions. The Participating Institutions are the American Museum of Natural History, Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, University of Basel, University of Cambridge, Case Western Reserve University, University of Chicago, Drexel University, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, the Korean Scientist Group, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (LAMOST), Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), New Mexico State University, Ohio State University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington.

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
14111
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20090429-134334936

Funding

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Participating Institutions
NSF
Department of Energy (DOE)
NASA
Japanese Monbukagakusho
Max Planck Society
Higher Education Funding Council for England

Dates

Created
2009-08-10
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-08
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

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