SDSS takes a trip through the past 12 billion years of our Universe

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The 2.5 meter (8.2 foot) SDSS telescope at Apache Point Observatory in southern New Mexico (Photo: SDSS-III)

Another view of the 2.5 meter (8.2 foot) SDSS-III telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico (Photo: SDSS-III)

The imaging camera on the Apache Point 2.5 meter telescope, which has a total of 226 megapixels and a resolution of 0.4 arc-seconds per pixel - sufficient to resolve the major topography of Titan (Photo: SDSS-III)

View of a cluster of galaxies spread along a dark matter filament (Photo: SDSS-III)

Shown here are three different "plug plates", which hold the spectrograph's fiber optics in position to gather light from the desired objects. Below is a photo of the fiber optics feeding the light into the spectrograph itself (Photo: SDSS-III)

A 2-D slice through our Universe showing galaxies up to two billion light years away. The filaments and clusters now known to be formed by the distribution of dark matter in the Universe can be clearly seen (Photo: SDSS-III)

Baryon acoustic oscillations appear as rings of larger galaxy density. Following these rings into the past revels a great deal about how the current configuration of the Universe came about (Image: SDSS-III)

Optical diagram of the highly parallel BOSS spectrograph (Photo: SDSS-III)

Evolution of our Universe from the onset of transparency (the time at which the 3K microwave background radiation was emitted) to the present (Image: SDSS-III)

Spectra of a galaxy (top) and a quasar (bottom) from SDSS-I/II and BOSS. The data show the extended spectral range and the improved signal-to-noise ratio of the BOSS spectrograph (Photo: SDSS-III)

BOSS image of quasar 3C273 clearly showing the jet of gas coming out of the quasar (Photo: SDSS-III)

An ordinary-looking faint blue star (left) is actually a pair of white dwarfs that could someday light up the sky as a Type Ia supernova. Analysis of SDSS data shows that such white dwarf pairs merge often enough that they could explain the origins of these giant cosmic explosions (Photo: SDSS-III)

Article Summary

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is little known to the public, but represents one of the most-challenging efforts in observational cosmology ever attempted. The most recent phase, SDSS-III, began in 2008 and includes the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), a part of SDSS-III aimed at mapping the cosmos. Its goal is to map the physical locations of all major galaxies back to seven billion years ago, and bright quasars back to 12 billion years ago – two billion years after the Big Bang. This is being done so we can gain a better understanding of dark matter and energy, and hopefully encounter a few surprises.

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