A new, public view of the sky

"For the first time, scientists and the public are beginning to see the large-scale structure of the universe, thanks to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. UA scientists provide scientific expertise and crucial technology to the largest project ever undertaken to map the cosmos.  On Jan. 6, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey issued its latest public data release, the final release of the third epoch of the survey. Weighing in at more than 100 Terabytes, 'Data Release 12' (DR12) contains measurements of the properties of nearly half a billion stars and galaxies, making it one of the largest and richest databases in the history of astronomy. 'The most astonishing feature of the SDSS is the breadth of ground-breaking research it enables,' said Daniel Eisenstein of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the director of SDSS-III. Eisenstein started the survey during his tenure as a professor at the UA's Steward Observatory, one of the survey's partner institutions.

'We've searched nearby stars for planets, probed the history of our Milky Way and measured nine billion years of our universe's accelerated expansion,'  he said ..."