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MAST Staff - 2025 Jul 28SDSS Legacy Imaging Data Now Available at MAST
The SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST (SLAM) now includes data from the SDSS Legacy Imaging survey!
The SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST (SLAM) is a partnership between the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V) collaboration and MAST, which will host a copy of all science-ready images, spectra, catalogs, and Value Added Catalogs (VACs) across all public SDSS data releases through SDSS-V. Data from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) and Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) , and Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) surveys have been available at MAST for a few months.
Now, SDSS Legacy Imaging data has been added to SLAM! The Imaging survey was the first program completed as part of SDSS, and collected data between September 19, 1998 and November 18, 2009. The SDSS Imaging Survey provides 5-filter ugriz imaging frames and photometry measurements for 938,046 unique fields, covering about one third of the whole sky. A summary of the imaging data products available at MAST can be found in the SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST User Manual.
Data Access
The SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST User Manual describes how to search for and download SDSS data using MAST interfaces. SDSS data can be accessed at MAST in-browser using the MAST Portal or in Python using astroquery.mast. Search for Mission="SDSS" to view all SDSS data, or use the "Provenance Name" field to search for specific SDSS surveys (for example, "SDSS Legacy Imaging" or "APOGEE"). There are also a few Jupyter Notebook tutorials available which demonstrate how to access SDSS data through MAST.
All released SDSS data, including the raw data and pre-science data products, still remain available through the SDSS-provided services including the Science Archive Server (SAS) and Catalog Archive Server (CAS). The copies hosted at MAST provide an additional entry point to discovering and accessing the data, and provide all of the advantages of a multi-mission archive: SDSS data is now available through the same interfaces as HST, JWST, TESS, Pan-STARRS, and Gaia holdings, opening up new opportunities for scientific synergies between missions.
New Tutorial Notebooks
In addition to the new data, two new SDSS+MAST related tutorial notebooks are now available!
- Creating a Color-Magnitude Diagram for Messier 13: This notebook teaches how to search for and download SDSS Legacy Imaging Data from MAST, creating an HR Diagram and using isochrones to estimate the age of globular cluster Messier 13.
- Calculating the Hubble Constant with eBOSS: This notebook demonstrates how to search for and download eBOSS data from MAST, calculating the Hubble constant using spectral data from eBOSS as well as creating a color image of galaxy cluster Abell 2199.
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