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SDSS IV logo

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, or SDSS, is an international collaboration of scientists gathering data from two telescopes in North and South America to build the most detailed Three-Dimensional Imagery of the Universe ever made. The SDSS has produced deep multi-color images of one third of the sky, and created spectra of more than three million astronomical objects.

SciServer is an NSF-supported project to build a big data platform that brings the computing to the data for extremely large datasets. Using SkyServer with your free SciServer account unlocks additional features.

SciServer hosts the following web-based apps that allow you to query and analyze your data in the cloud.

Voyages Icon

Voyages is the educational website for the SDSS. Voyages serves up projects, activities, resources, and research experiences for students of all ages that build on data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

SkyServer's Visual Tools make it easy to visualize and explore detailed astronomical data in regions of the sky covered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Although you don't need to be logged in to SciServer to use SkyServer, logging in gives you greater ability to integrate with other SciServer web apps.
Skyserver logo

Navigate, Explore, and Quick Look let you save your results to an online Workbook. Just click Save in Workbook to save your results, and Show Workbook to view your results.

SciServer logo

While you are logged into SciServer search forms allow you to save your data to MyDB, your own personal database. From there, your data is available in any SciServer app.

Casjobs logo

Your MyDB tables can be viewed and downloaded from CasJobs

Sciserver Compute logo

Compute's Jupyter Notebooks enable cloud-based analysis next to your data in the cloud, no downloading required. Use Python, R, and MATLAB to analyze your data in the cloud.

Cross ID icon

Cross-ID is a simple tool that enables you to perform dynamic cross identifications of SDSS objects against a user defined list.

SkyQuery icon
SkyQuery is a scalable database system for cross-matching astronomical source catalogs.
Quick look icon
Quick Look helps you get basic SDSS data about a single object. Data about the object is displayed in the panel. Click on other tools and links to find more information about your object.
Explore icon
Explore helps you find objects based on their object IDs or their sky position. Detailed information about the object is displayed in the panel. Click on other tools and links to obtain even more information about your object.
Finding chart icon
Finding Chart helps you specify the location, height, and width (in celestial coordinates) Various drawing options can be specified (opt). Use mark query to select objects of special interest.
  • Schema Browser - Browse database tables, columns, views, and stored procedures in the SDSS and other databases.
  • Scrolling Sky -Watch the sky scroll past the SDSS camera during an observation.
  • Get Fields - Get SDSS images from the run, camcol, field, and image size.
  • Get Spectra - Get SDSS images of spectra by plate and fiber number.
  • Get Plates - Get images of spectra by Plate ID.
  • CrossID - For running a dynamic cross identifications of SDSS objects.
  • SkyQuery CrossMatch - For running a statistical crossmatch against big catalogs with SkyQuery.
Cas Jobs icon
CasJobs is an online workbench for large scientific catalogs that allows you to perform synchronous and asynchronous free-form queries in your browser.