The Second Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Scientific paper - Original scientific paper

• Author: Kevork Abazajian
• Author: Branimir Sesar
• Author: Vernesa Smolčić
• Author: Daniel B. Zucker
• Author's institution: University of Zagreb; Faculty of Science; (Department of Physics)
• Scientific / art field, discipline and subdiscipline: NATURAL SCIENCES; Physics

Abstract (english)

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has validated and made publicly available its Second Data Release. This data release consists of 3324 deg2 of five-band (ugriz) imaging data with photometry for over 88 million unique objects, 367,360 spectra of galaxies, quasars, stars, and calibrating blank sky patches selected over 2627 deg2 of this area, and tables of measured parameters from these data. The imaging data reach a depth of r ≈ 22.2 (95% completeness limit for point sources) and are photometrically and astrometrically calibrated to 2% rms and 100 mas rms per coordinate, respectively. The imaging data have all been processed through a new version of the SDSS imaging pipeline, in which the most important improvement since the last data release is fixing an error in the model fits to each object. The result is that model magnitudes are now a good proxy for point-spread function magnitudes for point sources, and Petrosian magnitudes for extended sources. The spectroscopy extends from 3800 to 9200 Å at a resolution of 2000. The spectroscopic software now repairs a systematic error in the radial velocities of certain types of stars and has substantially improved spectrophotometry. All data included in the SDSS Early Data Release and First Data Release are reprocessed with the improved pipelines and included in the Second Data Release. Further characteristics of the data are described, as are the data products themselves and the tools for accessing them.

• Keywords (english): atlases; catalogs; surveys
• Language: english
• Publication type: Scientific paper - Original scientific paper
• Publication status: Published
• Peer review: Peer review - international
• Publication version: Published version
• Journal title: Astronomical Journal
• Numbering: vol. 128, no. 1, pp. 502-512
• p-ISSN: 0004-6256
• e-ISSN: 1538-3881
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/421365
• URN:NBN: urn:nbn:hr:217:752471
• Publication: 2004
• Type of resource: Text
• Access conditions: Open access
• Public note: © 2004 American Astronomical Society. Received 2004 March 8; accepted for publication 2004 March 16; published 2004 July.
• Created on: 2019-10-13 18:23:16