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The Sixth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

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Jennifer K. Adelman-McCarthy1, Marcel A. Agüeros2,3, Sahar S. Allam1,4, Carlos Allende Prieto5, Kurt S.J. Anderson6,7, Scott F. Anderson8, James Annis1, Neta A. Bahcall9, C. A. L. Bailer-Jones10, Ivan K. Baldry11,12, J. C. Barentine5, Bruce A. Bassett13,14, Andrew C. Becker8, Timothy C. Beers15, Eric F. Bell10, Andreas A. Berlind16, Mariangela Bernardi17, Michael R. Blanton16, John J. Bochanski8, William N. Boroski1, Jarle Brinchmann18, J. Brinkmann6, Robert J. Brunner19, Tamás Budavári12, Samuel Carliles12, Michael A. Carr9, Francisco J. Castander20, David Cinabro21, R. J. Cool22, Kevin R. Covey23, István Csabai12,24, Carlos E. Cunha25,26, James R. A. Davenport8, Ben Dilday26,27, Mamoru Doi28, Daniel J. Eisenstein22, Michael L. Evans8, Xiaohui Fan22, Douglas P. Finkbeiner23, Scott D. Friedman29, Joshua A. Frieman1,25,26, Masataka Fukugita30, Boris T. Gänsicke31, Evalyn Gates25, Bruce Gillespie6, Karl Glazebrook32, Jim Gray33, Eva K. Grebel34,35, James E. Gunn9, Vijay K. Gurbani1,36, Patrick B. Hall37, Paul Harding38, Michael Harvanek39, Suzanne L. Hawley8, Jeffrey Hayes40, Timothy M. Heckman12, John S. Hendry1, Robert B. Hindsley41, Christopher M. Hirata42, Craig J. Hogan8, David W. Hogg16, Joseph B. Hyde17, Shin-ichi Ichikawa43, Željko Ivezić8, Sebastian Jester10, Jennifer A. Johnson44, Anders M. Jorgensen45, Mario Jurić42, Stephen M. Kent1, R. Kessler46, S. J. Kleinman47, G. R. Knapp9, Richard G. Kron1,25, Jurek Krzesinski6,48, Nikolay Kuropatkin1, Donald Q. Lamb25,46, Hubert Lampeitl29, Svetlana Lebedeva1, Young Sun Lee15, R. French Leger1, Sébastien Lépine49, Marcos Lima26,27, Huan Lin1, Daniel C. Long6, Craig P. Loomis9, Jon Loveday50, Robert H. Lupton9, Olena Malanushenko6, Viktor Malanushenko6, Rachel Mandelbaum42,51, Bruce Margon52, John P. Marriner1, David Martínez-Delgado53, Takahiko Matsubara54, Peregrine M. McGehee55, Timothy A. McKay56, Avery Meiksin57, Heather L. Morrison38, Jeffrey A. Munn58, Reiko Nakajima17, Eric H. Neilsen, Jr.1, Heidi Jo Newberg59, Robert C. Nichol60, Tom Nicinski1,61, Maria Nieto-Santisteban12, Atsuko Nitta47, Sadanori Okamura62, Russell Owen8, Hiroaki Oyaizu25,26, Nikhil Padmanabhan51,63, Kaike Pan6, Changbom Park64, John Peoples, Jr.1, Jeffrey R. Pier58, Adrian C. Pope65, Norbert Purger24, M. Jordan Raddick12, Paola Re Fiorentin10, Gordon T. Richards66, Michael W. Richmond67, Adam G. Riess12, Hans-Walter Rix10, Constance M. Rockosi68, Masao Sako17,69, David J. Schlegel63, Donald P. Schneider70, Matthias R. Schreiber71, Axel D. Schwope72, Uroš Seljak73,74, Branimir Sesar8, Erin Sheldon25,26, Kazu Shimasaku62, Thirupathi Sivarani15, J. Allyn Smith75, Stephanie A. Snedden6, Matthias Steinmetz72, Michael A. Strauss9, Mark SubbaRao25,76, Yasushi Suto77, Alexander S. Szalay12, István Szapudi65, Paula Szkody8, Max Tegmark78, Aniruddha R. Thakar12, Christy A. Tremonti22, Douglas L. Tucker1, Alan Uomoto79, Daniel E. Vanden Berk70, Jan Vandenberg12, S. Vidrih80, Michael S. Vogeley66, Wolfgang Voges81, Nicole P. Vogt7, Yogesh Wadadekar9, David H. Weinberg44, Andrew A. West82, Simon D. M. White83, Brian C. Wilhite19,84, Brian Yanny1, D. R. Yocum1, Donald G. York25,46, Idit Zehavi38 and Daniel B. Zucker80

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This paper describes the Sixth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. With this data release, the imaging of the northern Galactic cap is now complete. The survey contains images and parameters of roughly 287 million objects over 9583 deg2, including scans over a large range of Galactic latitudes and longitudes. The survey also includes 1.27 million spectra of stars, galaxies, quasars, and blank sky (for sky subtraction) selected over 7425 deg2. This release includes much more stellar spectroscopy than was available in previous data releases and also includes detailed estimates of stellar temperatures, gravities, and metallicities. The results of improved photometric calibration are now available, with uncertainties of roughly 1% in g, r, i, and z, and 2% in u, substantially better than the uncertainties in previous data releases. The spectra in this data release have improved wavelength and flux calibration, especially in the extreme blue and extreme red, leading to the qualitatively better determination of stellar types and radial velocities. The spectrophotometric fluxes are now tied to point-spread function magnitudes of stars rather than fiber magnitudes. This gives more robust results in the presence of seeing variations, but also implies a change in the spectrophotometric scale, which is now brighter by roughly 0.35 mag. Systematic errors in the velocity dispersions of galaxies have been fixed, and the results of two independent codes for determining spectral classifications and redshifts are made available. Additional spectral outputs are made available, including calibrated spectra from individual 15 minute exposures and the sky spectrum subtracted from each exposure. We also quantify a recently recognized underestimation of the brightnesses of galaxies of large angular extent due to poor sky subtraction; the bias can exceed 0.2 mag for galaxies brighter than r = 14 mag.

Subject headings

atlases; catalogs; surveys


Dates

Issue 2 (2008 April)

Received 2007 July 23, accepted for publication 2007 October 18



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