The Sixth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
Creators: name: Adelman-McCarthy, Jennifer K.
name: Agüeros, Marcel Andre
name: Allam, Sahar S.
name: Allende Prieto, Carlos
name: Anderson, Kurt S. J.
name: Anderson, Scott F.
name: Annis, James
name: Bahcall, Neta A.
name: Bailer-Jones, C. A. L.
name: Baldry, Ivan K.
name: Barentine, J. C.
name: Bassett, Bruce A.
name: Becker, Andrew C.
name: Beers, Timothy C.
name: Berlind, Andreas
name: Bernardi, Mariangela
name: Blanton, Michael R.
name: Bochanski, John J.
name: Boroski, William N.
name: Brinchmann, Jarle
name: Brinkmann, J.
name: Brunner, Robert J.
name: Budavári, Tamás
name: Carliles, Samuel
name: Carr, Michael A.
name: Castander, Francisco J.
name: Cinabro, David
name: Cool, R. J.
name: Covey, Kevin R.
name: Csabai, István
name: Cunha, Carlos E.
name: Davenport, James R. A.
name: Dilday, Ben
name: Doi, Mamoru
name: Eisenstein, Daniel J.
name: Evans, Michael L.
name: Fan, Xiaohui
name: Finkbeiner, Douglas P.
name: Friedman, Scott D.
name: Frieman, Joshua A.
name: Fukugita, Masataka
name: Gänsicke, Boris T.
name: Gates, Evalyn
name: Gillespie, Bruce
name: Glazebrook, Karl
name: Gray, Jim
name: Grebel, Eva K.
name: Gunn, James E.
name: Gurbani, Vijay K.
name: Hall, Patrick B.
name: Harding, Paul
name: Harvanek, Michael
name: Hawley, Suzanne L.
name: Hayes, Jeffrey
name: Heckman, Timothy M.
name: Hendry, John S.
name: Hindsley, Robert B.
name: Hirata, Christopher M.
name: Hogan, Craig J.
name: Hogg, David W.
name: Ichikawa, Shin-Ichi
name: Ivezić, Željko
name: Jester, Sebastian
name: Johnson, Jennifer A.
name: Jorgensen, Anders M.
name: Jurić, Mario
name: Kent, Stephen M.
name: Kessler, R.
name: Kleinman, S. J.
name: Knapp, G. R.
name: Kron, Richard G.
name: Krzesinski, Jurek
name: Kuropatkin, Nikolay
name: Lamb, Donald Q.
name: Lampeitl, Hubert
name: Lebedeva, Svetlana
name: Lee, Young Sun
name: Leger, R. French
name: Lépine, Sébastien
name: Lima, Marcos
name: Lin, Huan
name: Long, Daniel C.
name: Loomis, Craig P.
name: Loveday, Jon
name: Lupton, Robert H.
name: Malanushenko, Olena
name: Malanushenko, Viktor
name: Mandelbaum, Rachel
name: Margon, Bruce
name: Marriner, John P.
name: Martínez-Delgado, David
name: Matsubara, Takahiko
name: McGehee, Peregrine M.
name: McKay, Timothy A.
name: Meiksin, Avery
name: Morrison, Heather L.
name: Munn, Jeffrey A.
name: Nakajima, Reiko
name: Neilsen, Eric H.
name: Newberg, Heidi Jo
name: Nichol, Robert C.
name: Nicinski, Tom
name: Nieto-Santisteban, Maria
name: Nitta, Atsuko
name: Okamura, Sadanori
name: Owen, Russell
name: Oyaizu, Hiroaki
name: Padmanabhan, Nikhil
name: Pan, Kaike
name: Park, Changbom
name: Peoples, John
name: Pier, Jeffrey R.
name: Pope, Adrian C.
name: Purger, Norbert
name: Raddick, M. Jordan
name: Re Fiorentin, Paola
name: Richards, Gordon T.
name: Richmond, Michael W.
name: Riess, Adam G.
name: Rix, Hans-Walter
name: Rockosi, Constance M.
name: Sako, Masao
name: Schlegel, David J.
name: Schneider, Donald P.
name: Schreiber, Matthias R.
name: Schwope, Axel D.
name: Seljak, Uroš
name: Sesar, Branimir
name: Sheldon, Erin
name: Shimasaku, Kazu
name: Sivarani, Thirupathi
name: Smith, J. Allyn
name: Snedden, Stephanie A.
name: Steinmetz, Matthias
name: Strauss, Michael A.
name: SubbaRao, Mark
name: Suto, Yasushi
name: Szalay, Alexander S.
name: Szapudi, István
name: Szkody, Paula
name: Tegmark, Max
name: Thakar, Aniruddha R.
name: Tremonti, Christy
name: Tucker, Douglas L.
name: Uomoto, Alan
name: Vanden Berk, Daniel E.
name: Vandenberg, Jan
name: Vidrih, S.
name: Vogeley, Michael S.
name: Voges, Wolfgang
name: Vogt, Nicole P.
name: Wadadekar, Yogesh
name: Weinberg, David H.
name: West, Andrew A.
name: White, Simon D. M.
name: Wilhite, Brian C.
name: Yanny, Brian
name: Yocum, D. R.
name: York, Donald G.
name: Zehavi, Idit
name: Zucker, Daniel B.
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2008
Subjects: Astrophysics
Stars--Observations
Imaging systems in astronomy
Astronomy

description: 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.