The First Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has validated and made publicly available its First Data Release. This consists of 2099 deg² 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 deg² 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 mas rms per coordinate, respectively. The spectra cover the range 3800–9200 Å, with a resolution of 1800–2100. This paper describes the characteristics of the data with emphasis on improvements since the release of commissioning data (the SDSS Early Data Release)…