The Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE) Survey obtained ≈240,000 moderateresolution (R ∼ 1800) spectra from 3900 Å to 9000 Å of fainter Milky Way stars (14.0 < g < 20.3) of a wide variety of spectral types, both main-sequence and evolved objects, with the goal of studying the kinematics and populations of our Galaxy and its halo. The spectra are clustered in 212 regions spaced over three quarters of the sky. Radial velocity accuracies for stars are σ (RV) ∼ 4 km s −1 at g < 18, degrading to σ (RV) ∼ 15 km s −1 at g ∼ 20. For stars with signal-to-noise ratio >10 per resolution element, stellar atmospheric parameters are 4377 4378 YANNY ET AL.Vol. 137 estimated, including metallicity, surface gravity, and effective temperature. SEGUE obtained 3500 deg 2 of additional ugriz imaging (primarily at low Galactic latitudes) providing precise multicolor photometry (σ (g, r, i) ∼ 2%), (σ (u, z) ∼ 3%) and astrometry (≈0 .1) for spectroscopic target selection. The stellar spectra, imaging data, and derived parameter catalogs for this survey are publicly available as part of Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has validated and made publicly available its Second Data Release. This data release consists of 3324 square degrees of five-band (u g r i z) 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 degrees 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 milli-arcsec 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 (PSF) magnitudes for point sources, and Petrosian magnitudes for extended sources. The spectroscopy extends from 3800 A to 9200 A 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. The data are publically available as of 2004 March 15 via the web sites http://www.sdss.org/dr2 and http://skyserver.sdss.org .Comment: 24 pages, submitted to AJ. See ftp://ftp.astro.princeton.edu/strauss/sdss/dr2.ps for high-resolution figure

This paper describes the fourth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), including all survey-quality data taken through June 2004. The data release includes five-band photometric data for 180 million objects selected over 6670 deg^2, and 673,280 spectra of galaxies, quasars, and stars selected from 4783 deg^2 of that imaging data using the standard SDSS target selection algorithms. These numbers represent a roughly 25% increment over those of the Third Data Release. The Fourth Data Release also includes an additional 131,840 spectra of objects selected using a variety of alternative algorithms, to address scientific issues ranging from the kinematics of stars in the Milky Way thick disk to populations of faint galaxies and quasars.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figure

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has validated and made publicly available its First Data Release. This consists of 2099 square degrees of five-band (u, g, r, i, z) imaging data, 186,240 spectra of galaxies, quasars, stars and calibrating blank sky patches selected over 1360 square degrees of this area, and tables of measured parameters from these data. The imaging data go to a depth of r ~ 22.6 and are photometrically and astrometrically calibrated to 2% rms and 100 milli-arcsec rms per coordinate, respectively. The spectra cover the range 3800--9200 A, with a resolution of 1800--2100. Further characteristics of the data are described, as are the data products themselves.Comment: Submitted to The Astronomical Journal. 16 pages. For associated documentation, see http://www.sdss.org/dr

This paper describes the Third Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). This release, containing data taken up through June 2003, includes imaging data in five bands over 5282 deg^2, photometric and astrometric catalogs of the 141 million objects detected in these imaging data, and spectra of 528,640 objects selected over 4188 deg^2. The pipelines analyzing both images and spectroscopy are unchanged from those used in our Second Data Release.Comment: 14 pages, including 2 postscript figures. Submitted to AJ. Data available at http://www.sdss.org/dr