The Eighth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Data from SDSS-III
Creators: name: III Collaboration
name: Aihara, Hiroaki
name: Prieto, Carlos Allende
name: An, Deokkeun
name: Anderson, Scott F.
name: Aubourg, Éric
name: Balbinot, Eduardo
name: Beers, Timothy C.
name: Berlind, Andreas A.
name: Bickerton, Steven J.
name: Bizyaev, Dmitry
name: Blanton, Michael R.
name: Bochanski, John J.
name: Bolton, Adam S.
name: Bovy, Jo
name: Brandt, W. N.
name: Brinkmann, J.
name: Brown, Peter J.
name: Brownstein, Joel R.
name: Busca, Nicolas G.
name: Campbell, Heather
name: Carr, Michael A.
name: Chen, Yanmei
name: Chiappini, Cristina
name: Comparat, Johan
name: Connolly, Natalia
name: Cortes, Marina
name: Croft, Rupert A. C.
name: Cuesta, Antonio J.
name: da Costa, Luiz N.
name: Davenport, James R. A.
name: Dawson, Kyle
name: Dhital, Saurav
name: Ealet, Anne
name: Ebelke, Garrett L.
name: Edmondson, Edward M.
name: Eisenstein, Daniel J.
name: Escoffier, Stephanie
name: Esposito, Massimiliano
name: Evans, Michael L.
name: Fan, Xiaohui
name: Castellá, Bruno Femení a
name: Font-Ribera, Andreu
name: Frinchaboy, Peter M.
name: Ge, Jian
name: Gillespie, Bruce A.
name: Gilmore, G.
name: Hernández, Jonay I. González
name: Gott, J. Richard
name: Gould, Andrew
name: Grebel, Eva K.
name: Gunn, James E.
name: Hamilton, Jean-Christophe
name: Harding, Paul
name: Harris, David W.
name: Hawley, Suzanne L.
name: Hearty, Frederick R.
name: Ho, Shirley
name: Hogg, David W.
name: Holtzman, Jon A.
name: Honscheid, Klaus
name: Inada, Naohisa
name: Ivans, Inese I.
name: Jiang, Linhua
name: Johnson, Jennifer A.
name: Jordan, Cathy
name: Jordan, Wendell P.
name: Kazin, Eyal A.
name: Kirkby, David
name: Klaene, Mark A.
name: Knapp, G. R.
name: Kneib, Jean-Paul
name: Kochanek, C. S.
name: Koesterke, Lars
name: Kollmeier, Juna A.
name: Kron, Richard G.
name: Lampeitl, Hubert
name: Lang, Dustin
name: Goff, Jean-Marc Le
name: Lee, Young Sun
name: Lin, Yen-Ting
name: Long, Daniel C.
name: Loomis, Craig P.
name: Lucatello, Sara
name: Lundgren, Britt
name: Lupton, Robert H.
name: Ma, Zhibo
name: MacDonald, Nicholas
name: Mahadevan, Suvrath
name: Maia, Marcio A. G.
name: Makler, Martin
name: Malanushenko, Elena
name: Malanushenko, Viktor
name: Mandelbaum, Rachel
name: Maraston, Claudia
name: Margala, Daniel
name: Masters, Karen L.
name: McBride, Cameron K.
name: McGehee, Peregrine M.
name: McGreer, Ian D.
name: Ménard, Brice
name: Miralda-Escudé, Jordi
name: Morrison, Heather L.
name: Mullally, F.
name: Muna, Demitri
name: Munn, Jeffrey A.
name: Murayama, Hitoshi
name: Myers, Adam D.
name: Naugle, Tracy
name: Neto, Angelo Fausti
name: Nguyen, Duy Cuong
name: Nichol, Robert C.
name: O'Connell, Robert W.
name: Ogando, Ricardo L. C.
name: Olmstead, Matthew D.
name: Oravetz, Daniel J.
name: Padmanabhan, Nikhil
name: Palanque-Delabrouille, Nathalie
name: Pan, Kaike
name: Pandey, Parul
name: Pâris, Isabelle
name: Percival, Will J.
name: Petitjean, Patrick
name: Pfaffenberger, Robert
name: Pforr, Janine
name: Phleps, Stefanie
name: Pichon, Christophe
name: Pieri, Matthew M.
name: Prada, Francisco
name: Price-Whelan, Adrian M.
name: Raddick, M. Jordan
name: Ramos, Beatriz H. F.
name: Reylé, Céline
name: Rich, James
name: Richards, Gordon T.
name: Rix, Hans-Walter
name: Robin, Annie C.
name: Rocha-Pinto, Helio J.
name: Rockosi, Constance M.
name: Roe, Natalie A.
name: Rollinde, Emmanuel
name: Ross, Ashley J.
name: Ross, Nicholas P.
name: Rossetto, Bruno M.
name: Sánchez, Ariel G.
name: Sayres, Conor
name: Schlegel, David J.
name: Schlesinger, Katharine J.
name: Schmidt, Sarah J.
name: Schneider, Donald P.
name: Sheldon, Erin
name: Shu, Yiping
name: Simmerer, Jennifer
name: Simmons, Audrey E.
name: Sivarani, Thirupathi
name: Snedden, Stephanie A.
name: Sobeck, Jennifer S.
name: Steinmetz, Matthias
name: Strauss, Michael A.
name: Szalay, Alexander S.
name: Tanaka, Masayuki
name: Thakar, Aniruddha R.
name: Thomas, Daniel
name: Tinker, Jeremy L.
name: Tofflemire, Benjamin M.
name: Tojeiro, Rita
name: Tremonti, Christy A.
name: Vandenberg, Jan
name: Magaña, M. Vargas
name: Verde, Licia
name: Vogt, Nicole P.
name: Wake, David A.
name: Wang, Ji
name: Weaver, Benjamin A.
name: Weinberg, David H.
name: White, Martin
name: White, Simon D. M.
name: Yanny, Brian
name: Yasuda, Naoki
name: Yeche, Christophe
name: Zehavi, Idit
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2011
Subjects: subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) started a new phase in August 2008, with new instrumentation and new surveys focused on Galactic structure and chemical evolution, measurements of the baryon oscillation feature in the clustering of galaxies and the quasar Ly alpha forest, and a radial velocity search for planets around ~8000 stars. This paper describes the first data release of SDSS-III (and the eighth counting from the beginning of the SDSS). The release includes five-band imaging of roughly 5200 deg^2 in the Southern Galactic Cap, bringing the total footprint of the SDSS imaging to 14,555 deg^2, or over a third of the Celestial Sphere. All the imaging data have been reprocessed with an improved sky-subtraction algorithm and a final, self-consistent photometric recalibration and flat-field determination. This release also includes all data from the second phase of the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Evolution (SEGUE-2), consisting of spectroscopy of approximately 118,000 stars at both high and low Galactic latitudes. All the more than half a million stellar spectra obtained with the SDSS spectrograph have been reprocessed through an improved stellar parameters pipeline, which has better determination of metallicity for high metallicity stars.
description: Astrophysical Journal Supplements, in press (minor updates from submitted version)