Mission Overview
Map of Observations
Wavelength Coverage
- MaNGA, eBOSS, SDSS Legacy: 3621-10354 Å
- APOGEE: 1.51-1.7 µm
- SDSS Imaging: ugriz filters, 3551-8931 Å
Summary:
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is an international collaboration producing wide-field imaging and high-resolution spectroscopic surveys since 1998. The SDSS Legacy Archive is the collection of science-ready SDSS data which is hosted at MAST. This includes images, spectra, catalogs and Value Added Catalogs (VACs) from all public SDSS data releases DR 1-22.
The SDSS Legacy Archive currently includes data from the SDSS-IV MaNGA survey. More surveys and data products will be added soon.
Active From
- SDSS-I: 1998-2005
- SDSS-II: 2005-2008
- SDSS-III: 2008-2014
- SDSS-IV: 2014-2020
- SDSS-V: 2020-Present
Resolution
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MaNGA, eBOSS, SDSS Legacy: R~2,000
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APOGEE: R~22,500
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SDSS Imaging: 0.396 arcsec/pixel
Telescopes
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Apache Point Observatory SDSS 2.5-M
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Apache Point Observatory NMSU 1.0-M
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Las Campanas Observatory du Pont 2.5-M
On this Page
Documentation
EARLY RELEASE NOTE: If you are reading this, the SDSS Legacy Archive is still in progress and the manual has not been published yet. The SDSS Archive Manual will be available starting next week (October 25, 2024)
October 25, 2024
The SDSS Legacy Archive Manual
The SDSS Archive Manual website contains data product overviews, summaries of MAST tools, and tutorials on how to interact with SDSS data at MAST.
Surveys
SDSS consists of a number of surveys programs defined by different instrumentation and scientific motivation. The surveys available at MAST are listed below.
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Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory; Optical wide-field IFU spectroscopic survey of over 10,000 low-redshift galaxies
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More Coming Soon
The SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST is under active development: more SDSS surveys and data products will be added soon!
Search Tools
There are several interfaces for accessing SDSS data at MAST. For more information, see the SDSS Data Access page in the Archive Manual (Coming Soon) for instructions on accessing and downloading SDSS data at MAST.
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MAST Portal
A web-based interface for cross-mission searches of data at MAST or the Virtual Observatory.
- In the MAST Search Portal, SDSS data can be found in an Advanced Search by searching for Mission = "SDSS" or using the Provenance Name field for a specific survey (for example Provenance Name = "APOGEE" or Provenance Name = "MaNGA", not case sensitive).
The user guide for how to search and download products using the MAST Portal is available here. - For Astroquery, the following example code demonstrates how to search for SDSS data in Python.
from astroquery.mast import Observations
# Search for all SDSS targets
all_obs = Observations.query_criteria(obs_collection="sdss")
print(all_obs)
# Search for MaNGA data only
all_obs = Observations.query_criteria(provenance_name="manga")
data_products = Observations.get_product_list(all_obs)
print(data_products)
Featured Data Products
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Images & Photometry
The SDSS Imaging survey provides wide-field imaging and ugriz photometry for 14,055 square degrees of sky. -
Spectra
APOGEE, MaNGA, eBOSS, and the SDSS Legacy surveys provide optical and infrared spectroscopy of a combined millions of stars and galaxies. -
Spectral Cubes
The MaNGA survey provides 3D spectral cubes and galaxy maps containing velocities, spectral index and emission line measurements. -
Catalogs
All SDSS surveys provide catalogs of source lists, observation metadata, and derived measurements for their targets, as well as community-contributed value-added catalogs.
Tutorials
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MaNGA Notebook Tutorial
Jupyter Notebook tutorial for accessing MaNGA data at MAST, and making an H-alpha emission map for interacting galaxy pair Mrk-848B -
Astroquery.MAST Tutorials
Beginner-level tutorials for how to use astroquery to search and download MAST data using Python