Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

June 17, 1998
See Explanation.  Clicking on the picture will download 
 the highest resolution version available.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Telescope
Credit: SDSS Team, Fermilab Visual Media Services

Explanation: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) will soon begin. Pictured above is the 2.5-meter telescope poised to create the most ambitious sky map in the history of astronomy. SDSS will catalog one quarter of the sky down past 23rd magnitude ( R), obtaining redshifts for galaxies and quasars brighter than magnitude 19. SDSS is expected to store about 200 Gigabytes of data each night. Astronomers will work to cull from this information an unprecedented three-dimensional view of our local universe. However, the SDSS may one day be remembered not only for the hundreds of millions of objects which it could see, but for how it indicated the nature and composition of the rest of the universe which it could not see.

Tomorrow's picture: Cosmic Rays


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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
NASA Technical Rep.: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA/ GSFC
&: Michigan Tech. U.