The Second Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

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…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy
• NA
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• AP
  Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
• PU
  Princeton University
• UO
  University of Washington
• JH
  Johns Hopkins University
• UO
  University of Pittsburgh
• NM
  New Mexico State University
• M
  Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
• MF
  Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie
• UN
  U.S. Naval Observatory
• F
  Fermilab
• LA
  Los Alamos National Laboratory