http://www.sdss3.org/press/ The latest astronomy news from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Astronomy SDSS-III http://www.sdss3.org/images/logo_sm.jpg http://www.sdss3.org/press/ en-us http://www.sdss3.org/press/20150730.farfromhome.php Scientists with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have created a new map of the Milky Way and determined that 30 percent of stars have dramatically changed their orbits. Thurs, 30 July 2015 10:15:00 EDT http://www.sdss3.org/press/20150730.farfromhome.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/precise.php Astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have used 140,000 distant quasars to measure the expansion rate of the Universe when it was only one-quarter of its present age. This is the best measurement yet of the expansion rate at any epoch in the last 13 billion years. Mon, 7 April 2014 13:00:00 EDT http://www.sdss3.org/press/precise.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/onepercent.php Researchers from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) today announced that they have measured the distances to galaxies more than six billion light-years away to an unprecedented accuracy of just one percent. Their measurements place new constraints on the properties of the mysterious "dark energy" thought to permeate empty space, which causes the expansion of the Universe to accelerate. Wed, 8 January 2014 14:15:00 EST http://www.sdss3.org/press/onepercent.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/dr10.php Today, astronomers with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) released a new online public data set featuring 60,000 stars that are helping to tell the story of how our Milky Way galaxy formed. The highlight of today's "Data Release 10" is a new set of high-resolution stellar spectra - measurements of the amount of light given off by a star at each wavelength - using infrared light, invisible to human eyes but able to penetrate the veil of dust that obscures the center of the Galaxy. Wed, 31 July 2013 00:01:00 EST http://www.sdss3.org/press/dr10.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/milkywaybar.php Forget the restaurant at the end of the Universe — astronomers now have the clearest picture yet of the bar at the center of the Milky Way. Scientists with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) have announced the discovery of hundreds of stars rapidly moving together in long, looping orbits around the center of our Galaxy. "The best explanation for their orbits is that these stars are part of the Milky Way bar," says David Nidever, a Dean B. McLaughin Fellow in the Astronomy Department at the University of Michigan. "Studying the bar is a key piece of the puzzle to understanding the whole galaxy, even out here in the spiral arms. Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:01:00 EST http://www.sdss3.org/press/milkywaybar.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/lyabao.php For the past five billion years, the expansion of the Universe has been speeding up, powered by the mysterious repulsive force known as "dark energy." But thanks to a new technique for measuring the three-dimensional structure of the distant Universe, astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) have made the first measurement of the cosmic expansion rate just three billion years after the Big Bang. Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:00:00 EST http://www.sdss3.org/press/lyabao.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/thewind.php The case of the missing quasar gas clouds has been solved by a worldwide team of astronomers, and the answer is blowin' in the wind. Astronomers Nurten Filiz Ak and Niel Brandt of the Pennsylvania State University led the team, which announced their results in a paper published in today's issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The paper describes 19 distant quasars in which giant clouds of gas seemed to disappear in just a few years. Mon, 1 Oct 2012 06:00:00 EDT http://www.sdss3.org/press/thewind.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/dr9.php The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) has released the largest-ever three-dimensional map of massive galaxies and distant black holes, which will help astronomers explain the mysterious "dark matter" and "dark energy" that scientists know makes up 96 percent of the universe. Wed, 8 Aug 2012 08:00:00 EDT http://www.sdss3.org/press/dr9.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/20120330.bspec.php The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) today announced the most accurate measurements yet of the distances to galaxies in the faraway universe, giving an unprecedented look at the time when the universe first began to expand at an ever-increasing rate. Fri, 30 Mar 2012 05:00:00 EDT http://www.sdss3.org/press/20120330.bspec.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/20120319.ksz.php In 1972, a young astronomer predicted that moving clusters of galaxies would leave a subtle imprint on the cosmic microwave background radiation - but he had no way to check his prediction. Forty years later, another young astronomer has proved him right - by combining data from two huge international astronomy collaborations. Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:42:15 EST http://www.sdss3.org/press/20120319.ksz.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/20120227.fireworks.php A little luck and a lot of hard work can really light up the sky. Taking advantage of a little-known feature of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a team of astronomers led by Carles Badenes of the University of Pittsburgh has helped to clarify the origins of an important type of exploding star—using nothing but a few thousand small, faint stars in our own cosmic backyard. Mon, 27 Feb 2012 06:00:00 EST http://www.sdss3.org/press/20120227.fireworks.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/20120111.sloanguide.php When you really want to see a place, sometimes a map just isn't enough. Today, SDSS scientists announced results that, taken together, interpret this map to retrace the history of the universe over the last six billion years. Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:00:00 CST http://www.sdss3.org/press/20120111.sloanguide.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/20120109.galaxy.php Astronomy has a powerful new tool to probe the structure of our galaxy. The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) spectrograph is the newest instrument deployed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III). SDSS scientists presented the revolutionary capabilities of this high-resolution infrared at a meeting today. Mon, 9 Jan 2012 11:45:00 CST http://www.sdss3.org/press/20120109.galaxy.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/20120109.wander.php Some stars have orbits that take them to interesting places, and they have interesting stories to tell about how they were formed. At today's meeting of the American Astronomical Society, astronomers Judy Cheng and and Connie Rockosi (University of California, Santa Cruz) presented new evidence that will help answer long-standing questions about the history of disk of our galaxy. Mon, 9 Jan 2012 11:45:00 CST http://www.sdss3.org/press/20120109.wander.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/20111130.fourtails.php The Milky Way galaxy continues to devour its small neighboring dwarf galaxies and the evidence is spread out across the sky. Thu, 1 Dec 2011 14:00:00 EST http://www.sdss3.org/press/20111130.fourtails.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/20110501.littlelight.php Scientists from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) have created the largest ever three-dimensional map of the distant universe by using the light of the brightest objects in the cosmos to illuminate ghostly clouds of intergalactic hydrogen. The map provides an unprecedented view of what the universe looked like 11 billion years ago. Sun, 1 May 2011 10:00:00 PDT http://www.sdss3.org/press/20110501.littlelight.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/20110111.largestimage.php Today, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III (SDSS-III) is releasing the largest digital color image of the sky ever made, and it's free to all. The image has been put together over the last decade from millions of 2.8-megapixel images, thus creating a color image of more than a trillion pixels. This terapixel image is so big and detailed that one would need 500,000 high-definition TVs to view it at its full resolution. Tue, 11 Jan 2011 10:30:00 PST http://www.sdss3.org/press/20110111.largestimage.php http://www.sdss3.org/press/20101001.bossfirstlight.php The most ambitious attempt yet to trace the history of the universe has seen "first light." The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), a part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), took its first astronomical data on the night of September 14-15 after years of preparations. That night, astronomers used the Sloan Foundation 2.5-meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico to measure the spectra of a thousand galaxies and quasars, thus starting a quest to eventually collect spectra for 1.4 million galaxies and 160,000 quasars by 2014. Thu, 1 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EDT http://www.sdss3.org/press/20101001.bossfirstlight.php