Penn State University astronomers are among the scientists of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) who this week are releasing to the public a massive collection of new information about the universe. "This set of observations is one of the largest astronomical databases ever assembled," remarked Donald Schneider, Distinguished Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State.
"The more than 70 terabytes we collected during the third epoch of this survey, SDSS-III, contain information on nearly half-a-billion stars and galaxies, including three-dimensional cosmic structures that formed billions of years before the sun began to shine," Schneider said. "This data release will undoubtedly form the basis for many future scientific investigations." Schneider is the SDSS-III survey coordinator and the project's scientific publication coordinator.
"The most astonishing feature of the SDSS is the breadth of groundbreaking research it enables," said SDSS-III Director Daniel Eisenstein of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "We've searched nearby stars for planets, probed the history of our Milky Way and measured 9 billion years of our universe's accelerated expansion. Our data also provide the first direct probe of the expansion rate of the universe 10 billion years ago."
"One of the most important decisions we made at the beginning of the SDSS was that we would release all of our data, so everyone could use it," said Alex Szalay of Johns Hopkins University, which developed the powerful online interfaces that most astronomers and many in the general public use to access the SDSS.
The SDSS-III web site is http://www.sdss3.org .
"The more than 70 terabytes we collected during the third epoch of this survey, SDSS-III, contain information on nearly half-a-billion stars and galaxies, including three-dimensional cosmic structures that formed billions of years before the sun began to shine," Schneider said. "This data release will undoubtedly form the basis for many future scientific investigations." Schneider is the SDSS-III survey coordinator and the project's scientific publication coordinator.
"The most astonishing feature of the SDSS is the breadth of groundbreaking research it enables," said SDSS-III Director Daniel Eisenstein of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "We've searched nearby stars for planets, probed the history of our Milky Way and measured 9 billion years of our universe's accelerated expansion. Our data also provide the first direct probe of the expansion rate of the universe 10 billion years ago."
"One of the most important decisions we made at the beginning of the SDSS was that we would release all of our data, so everyone could use it," said Alex Szalay of Johns Hopkins University, which developed the powerful online interfaces that most astronomers and many in the general public use to access the SDSS.
The SDSS-III web site is http://www.sdss3.org .