Telescope Reviews: Sloan Digital Sky Survey News

"After a decade of construction and eight years of operation (SDSS-I, 2000-2005; SDSS-II, 2005-2008), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) completed its observations in mid-July and will release its final data set to the public in October. SDSS-III, a six-year program composed of four new surveys, has now begun, using the same telescope."

A giant astronomical survey completes its mission: A new mission begins

"The halo of stars that envelops the Milky Way galaxy is like a river delta criss-crossed by stellar streams large and small, according to new data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II). While the largest rivers of this delta have been mapped out over the last decade, analysis of the new SDSS-II map shows that smaller streams can be found throughout the stellar halo, said Kevin Schlaufman, a graduate student at the University of California at Santa Cruz."

New Milky Way map reveals a complicated outer galaxy

"The largest 3-dimensional maps of the universe show that galaxies lie in filamentary superclusters interlaced by vast zones of emptiness, cosmic voids tens of millions of light years across that contain few or no bright galaxies. Researchers analyzing the two largest maps, from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II) and the Two-Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS), have concluded that these voids are also missing the "halos" of invisible dark matter that bright galaxies reside in."

Cosmic voids were emptied by gravity: Sizes of giant voids in the universe match the predictions of standard cosmology

"A 'minor planet' with the prosaic name 2006 SQ372 is just over two billion miles from Earth, a bit closer than the planet Neptune. But this lump of ice and rock is beginning the return leg of a 22,500-year journey that will take it to a distance of 150 billion miles, nearly 1,600 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, according to a team of researchers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II)."

See you again in 22,000 years: Astronomers find an unusual new denizen of the Solar System

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"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." -- Sir Isaac Newton