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The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan Jim Gunn ˇ Zeljko Ivezi´ c Jill Knapp Michael Strauss ··· University of Chicago, Fermilab, Institute for Advanced Study, Japanese Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Max-Planck Institute (MPIA), Max-Planck Institute (MPA), New Mexico State University University of Pittsburg Princeton University, United States Naval Observatory, University of Washington Irvine, June 2002 1
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The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

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Page 1: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Robert Lupton

Xiaohui Fan

Jim Gunn

Zeljko Ivezic

Jill Knapp

Michael Strauss

· · ·

University of Chicago,Fermilab,

Institute for Advanced Study,Japanese Participation Group,

Johns Hopkins University,Los Alamos National Laboratory,

Max-Planck Institute (MPIA),Max-Planck Institute (MPA),New Mexico State University

University of PittsburgPrinceton University,

United States Naval Observatory,University of Washington

Irvine, June 2002

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Page 2: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Objectives

• Map the large scale structure of the Universe

• Survey the Northern Galactic Cap (104 square degrees) in

five bands (u’ g’ r’ i’ z’) to PSF magnitude limits of 22.3,

23.3, 23.1, 22.3, and 20.8

• Obtain astrometry good to ∼ 30mas/coordinate

• Spectroscopic survey at a resolution R ≈ 2000 of

– 106 galaxies:

– 105 QSOs

– few ×104 stars

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Page 3: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Objectives

• Make images and associated catalogs of 1/4 of the entire sky,namely that part away from the Milky Way, and visible fromthe northern hemisphere. We expect to detect and measurewell over 108 galaxies, and a similar number of stars.

• Try to use all photons that pass through the atmosphere, butnot through silicon; basically 310nm—1050nm. At peak, wedetect about 50% of photons that fall on the primary mirror.

• Obtain images of stars a few million times fainter than thosejust visible to the naked eye on a dark night.

• Obtain spectra for 106 galaxies, 105 quasars, and a few ×104

stars. These spectra tell us the radial velocities (and hencedistances to the galaxies and quasars), but they also tell usa lot about the objects’ physical conditions.

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Page 4: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Instrumentation

• A telescope (with a 2.5m diameter primary mirror) at ApachePoint, New Mexico

• A camera containing

– 30 2048× 2048 photometric CCDs;∗

u’ g’ r’ i’ z’ filters

– 24 2048× 400 astrometric and focus CCDs

– Lots of Electronics, Quartz, Liquid Nitrogen, and Vacuum

• Two 320-fibre-fed double spectrographs, each with two 2048×2048 CCDs

• Lots of software

∗Charge Coupled Devices

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Page 5: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Software

The software was a difficult technical challenge on this project;probably harder than building the telescope and camera.∗

• Moderately large data volumes:

– 20Gb/hr when imaging

– 10-15 Tb over the course of the survey

• Data is taken under varying conditions, but the great strengthof a dedicated survey such as SDSS is producing a uniformdataset.

• We are sensitive to the (non-Gaussian) tails of distributions;for example 4 objects with particular properties out of 15million.

∗I don’t count building a functioning collaboration between scientists and institutions as atechnical challenge

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Page 6: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

The spiral galaxy NGC428

The image maps the i-r-g filters to RGB, so what appears as a

tasteful bluish-cyan is really dominated by the strong emission

lines of [OIII] (5007A) and Hα (6563A).

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Page 7: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

A cluster of galaxies

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Page 8: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

A 2.2’ × 1.9’ piece of sky (0.2s)

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Page 9: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

These are all very nice, but:

Why Bother?

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Page 10: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Why Bother?

• Doesn’t the Hubble Space Telescope do all this?

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Page 11: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Why Bother?

• Doesn’t the Hubble Space Telescope do all this?

• No; it produces exquisite images of tiny pieces of the sky.

We produce OK images of large chunks of the sky.

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Page 12: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Why Bother?

• Doesn’t the Hubble Space Telescope do all this?

• No; it produces exquisite images of tiny pieces of the sky.

We produce OK images of large chunks of the sky.

• What about those enormous telescopes in Hawai‘i and Chile?

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Page 13: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Why Bother?

• Doesn’t the Hubble Space Telescope do all this?

• No; it produces exquisite images of tiny pieces of the sky.

We produce OK images of large chunks of the sky.

• What about those enormous telescopes in Hawai‘i and Chile?

• They’re great for catching photons, and some of they are

producing images almost as good as HST (maybe better

in the IR); but they’re still looking in great detail at small

patches of the sky.

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Page 14: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Why Bother?

• Doesn’t the Hubble Space Telescope do all this?

• No; it produces exquisite images of tiny pieces of the sky.

We produce OK images of large chunks of the sky.

• What about those enormous telescopes in Hawai‘i and Chile?

• They’re great for catching photons, and some of they are

producing images almost as good as HST (maybe better

in the IR); but they’re still looking in great detail at small

patches of the sky.

• But the patches are so far away that they represent a large

volume, right?

14

Page 15: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Why Bother?

• Doesn’t the Hubble Space Telescope do all this?

• No; it produces exquisite images of tiny pieces of the sky.We produce OK images of large chunks of the sky.

• What about those enormous telescopes in Hawai‘i and Chile?

• They’re great for catching photons, and some of they areproducing images almost as good as HST (maybe betterin the IR); but they’re still looking in great detail at smallpatches of the sky.

• But the patches are so far away that they represent a largevolume, right?

• Right; but it’s a volume of the Universe that’s only a fewGigayears old. SDSS can tell you what the local Universe isdoing now and we need to know both.

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Page 16: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

OK, so SDSS is unique, but how does it Advance Astronomy?

or

Are Pretty Pictures Science?

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Page 17: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Stars (and galaxies) lie in quite well-defined parts of colourn

space. In many cases, the colours tell us much of what we want

to know. For example, blue stars are hot; red stars are cool.

All the stellar objects detected in about 2.5 degrees2 of sky;

yellow–red colour v. red–infrared colour

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Page 18: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Colours are not always good enough...

A-type star White Dwarf

Both of these stars have a similar temperature, but the radii (and

therefore luminosities L ∼ R2T4) are very different.

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Page 19: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

But not all blue point-like objects are stars...

A Quasar at a redshift z of about 3 (i.e. λ = (1 + z)λ0 ≈ 4λ0)

The prominent emission line at ≈ 5000A is Lyα, the fundamental

n = 2→ 1 transition of hydrogen. The spectrum to the blue (i.e.

left) of Lyα shows absorption by neutral hydrogen between us and

the quasar.

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Page 20: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

The yellow represents neutral and the white ionized hydrogen;quasars are magenta and you are sitting at the right-hand-sideof the page. Quasars that are further away (higher z; further tothe left) pass through more hydrogen and therefore more of thelight that they emit to the blueward of Lyα is absorbed.

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Page 21: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

And not all quasars are blue (or bright)

gri (green–red–near infrared) riz (red–near infrared–less nearinfrared)

A quasar at z ≈ 6.28; all the visible and near infrared light is

absorbed by intervening neutral hydrogen.

Hint: Look between the star and the galaxy, and down a little

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Page 22: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Becker et al.

2001, AJ, 122, 2850

� ��� �

�������� ��������� ��������� � �� � ����! �"$#�% &('�)+*-,.��/�0������ 1��2 ���3� �4657� �08:9 ���;�<�=?>�@2AB�DC �08 E 1��� ���3� �4F"G�����H �I 8 �� � �� � ����J���$�0�K �L8 �� � NM$OP � �RQ� ��TSVU �

22

Page 23: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Not all weird-coloured objects are at cosmological distances;

some are asteroids in our solar system.

The images map the i-r-g filters to RGB. The data is taken in

the order riuzg, i.e. GR··B

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Page 24: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

The colours of a sample of known asteroids observed by SDSS

(a∗ is basically g − r)24

Page 25: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

The semi-major axis v. (proper) inclination of a sample of known

asteroids detected by SDSS

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Page 26: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

The semi-major axis v. (proper) inclination of a sample of known

asteroids detected by SDSS

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Page 27: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

The End

or (more accurately)

Time for me to make way for Eva Grebel and Daniel Eisenstein

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Page 28: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

Field 2570 4 194; 10’ × 13’; 7s of SDSS imaging

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Page 29: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

SDSS response curves

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Page 30: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

In each panel, the bottom-left image is the gri colour-composite

of an ‘object’ from the SDSS imaging data. The other two

panels show the decomposition of this composite into objects

that are measured and catalogued by the SDSS software.

An asteroid passing a star A fast asteroid passing a star

The images map the i-r-g filters to RGB. The data is taken in

the order riuzg, i.e. GR··B30

Page 31: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

All the stars detected in about 2.5 square degrees of sky;

yellow–red colour v. brightness

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Page 32: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

10� -2 10� -1 10� 0 10� 1 10� 2 10� 3

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

1010

1011

1012

Farinella et al. 92 (1)Farinella et al. 92 (2)Farinella et al. 92 (3)Farinella et al. 92 (4) Galileo teamDavis et al. 94Durda et al 98. ModelSAM99 ModelSDSS 2001

<----

- LARGE SIZEBUMP

<----

SMALL SIZEBUMP

D (km)

CU

MU

LAT

IVE

NU

MB

ER

> D

COMPARISON OF ASTEROID SIZE DISTR� IBUTION: OBSERVATIONS AND MODELS

The asteroid size distribution (Davis 2002, in Asteroids III).

SDSS results:1) Extended the observed range to ∼300m2) Detected the second break at ∼5 km

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Page 33: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey - astro.princeton.edurhl/Talks/NAS.pdf · The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Robert Lupton Xiaohui Fan ... namely that part away from the Milky Way, ... The

1 101 10

The impact rate for D>1 km: once in a million years

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