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Mission Overview

Map of Observations

Sky coverage map for the SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST (SLAM), including data from the SDSS-IV APOGEE, eBOSS, and MaNGA surveys. The SDSS Imaging Survey's footprint is plotted in gray,  the APOGEE footprint in red, the eBOSS footprint in blue, and the MaNGA footprint is plotted in green. For the spectroscopic data, the footprints were derived from the SDSS summary catalogs, the "allStar" catalog for APOGEE, the "spAll" file for eBOSS, and the "drpall" file for MaNGA. 
Sky coverage map for the SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST (SLAM), including data from the SDSS-IV APOGEE, eBOSS, and MaNGA surveys. The SDSS Imaging Survey's footprint is plotted in gray,  the APOGEE footprint in red, the eBOSS footprint in blue, and the MaNGA footprint is plotted in green. For the spectroscopic data, the footprints were derived from the SDSS summary catalogs, the "allStar" catalog for APOGEE, the "spAll" file for eBOSS, and the "drpall" file for MaNGA. 

Wavelength Coverage

sdssSpectraChart.png

  • MaNGA, eBOSS: 3621-10354 Å 
  • SDSS Legacy Spectra, SEGUE: 3800-9200 Å
  • APOGEE: 1.51-1.7 µm
  • SDSS Imaging: ugriz filters, 3551-8931 Å

 

Summary:

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is an international collaboration producing wide-field imaging and high-resolution spectroscopic surveys since 1998. The SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST is the collection of science-ready SDSS data which is hosted at MAST. This includes all unique, final, science-ready data products across all data releases through SDSS-V, including images, spectra, catalogs and Value Added Catalogs (VACs).

The SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST currently includes data from:

Active From

  • SDSS-I: 1998-2005
  • SDSS-II: 2005-2008
  • SDSS-III: 2008-2014
  • SDSS-IV: 2014-2020
  • SDSS-V: 2020-Present

Resolution 

  • MaNGA, eBOSS, SDSS Legacy Spectra, SEGUE: R~2,000

  • APOGEE: R~22,500

  • SDSS Legacy Imaging: 0.396 arcsec/pixel

Telescopes 

  • Apache Point Observatory SDSS 2.5-M

  • Apache Point Observatory NMSU 1.0-M

  • Las Campanas Observatory du Pont 2.5-M

On this Page

Documentation

The SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST User Manual

October 30,  2025

The SDSS Archive Manual website contains data product overviews, summaries of MAST tools, and tutorials on how to interact with SDSS data at MAST.

Screenshot of SDSS Archive Manual

Surveys

All Surveys at MAST

SDSS consists of a number of surveys programs defined by different instrumentation and scientific motivation. The surveys available at MAST are listed below.

 

  • APOGEE

    Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment; high-resolution infrared spectroscopic survey of over 650,000 unique stars.
    Read More

  • eBOSS

    The Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) provides 1D optical spectra of 3.9 million quasars, galaxies, and stars.
    Read More

  • MaNGA

    Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory; Optical wide-field IFU spectroscopic survey of over 10,000 low-redshift galaxies.
    Read More

  • SDSS Legacy Imaging

    SDSS Legacy Imaging: wide-field images and ugriz photometry for 14,055 square degrees of sky.
    Read More

  • SDSS Legacy Spectra and SEGUE

    SDSS Legacy Spectra and the SEGUE extension: 1.8 million optical-wavelength spectra of stars, quasars, and galaxies.
    Read More

  • More Coming Soon

    The SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST is under active development: more SDSS surveys and data products will be added soon!

Search Tools

There are several interfaces for accessing SDSS data at MAST. For more information, see the Data Access page in the Archive Manual for instructions on accessing and downloading SDSS data at MAST.

  • MAST Portal

    A screenshot of the MAST Portal

    A web-based interface for cross-mission searches of data at MAST or the Virtual Observatory.

    Read More

  • astroquery.mast

    A screenshot of a Jupyter notebook showing how to use astroquery

    Search for and retrieve SDSS data products programmatically using Python

    Read More

  • MAST API

    A block of code showing an example MAST API query

    Tools for programmatically querying the MAST Portal

    Read More

 

  • In the MAST Search Portal, SDSS data can be found in an Advanced Search by searching for Mission = "SDSS" or using the Provenance Name field for a specific survey (for example Provenance Name = "APOGEE" or Provenance Name = "MaNGA", not case sensitive).
    The user guide for how to search and download SDSS data using the MAST Portal is available here.
  • For astroquery.mast, the following example code demonstrates how to search for SDSS data in Python. More example queries for SDSS data can be found in the SDSS Archive Manual
from astroquery.mast import Observations

# Search for all SDSS targets
all_obs = Observations.query_criteria(obs_collection="sdss")
print(all_obs)

# Search for MaNGA data only
all_obs = Observations.query_criteria(provenance_name="manga")
data_products = Observations.get_product_list(all_obs)
print(data_products)

Featured Data Products

All Data Products

  • Images & Photometry

    SDSS Image of globular cluster M13, obtained from the SDSS SkyServer
    The SDSS Imaging survey provides wide-field imaging and ugriz photometry for 14,055 square degrees of sky.

  • Spectra

    A series of optical spectra from the SDSS MaStar stellar library, ordered by temperature with the hottest star on top and the coolest star on the bottom.
    APOGEE, MaNGA, eBOSS, and the SDSS Legacy surveys provide optical and infrared spectroscopy of a combined millions of stars and galaxies.

  • Spectral Cubes

    An illustration of the footprint of a 127 fiber MaNGA bundle overlaid on an image of a spiral galaxy. Image from https://www.sdss4.org/feature_manga_2/
    The MaNGA survey provides 3D spectral cubes and galaxy maps containing velocities, spectral index and emission line measurements.

  • Catalogs

    The SDSS’s map of the Universe. Each dot is a galaxy; the color is the g-r color of that galaxy. Image from https://www.sdss4.org/science/orangepie/
    All SDSS surveys provide catalogs of source lists, observation metadata, and derived measurements for their targets, as well as community-contributed value-added catalogs.

Tutorials

All SDSS Notebook Tutorials

  • APOGEE: Variable Stars

    Example figure from the APOGEE-TESS tutorial notebook, showing an HR digram made with stellar parameters APOGEE data.
    Jupyter Notebook tutorial for downloading APOGEE data from MAST, plotting stellar spectra from APOGEE with light curves from TESS to characterize different types of variable stars.
    View Tutorial

  • eBOSS: Hubble Constant

    An HST image of the galaxy cluster Abell 2199, used to calculate the Hubble Constant in this tutorial notebook.
    Jupyter Notebook tutorial for accessing eBOSS data at MAST, and calculating the Hubble Constant using galaxy cluster Abell 2199.
    View Tutorial

  • eBOSS: Quasar Spectra

    An example figure from the eBOSS tutorial notebook, showing quasar spectra at different redshifts. Different emission lines, such as Lyman-alpha, Carbon IV (C IV), and Magnesium II (MG II) are highlighted in different colors.
    Jupyter Notebook tutorial for accessing eBOSS data at MAST, plotting spectra and identifying emission lines for high-redshift quasars from eBOSS and JWST.
    View Tutorial

  • MaNGA: Galaxy Maps

    An HST image of the interacting galaxy pair Mrk-848B. Two spiral galaxies are interacting and merging together. On top of the image, H-alpha emission line flux contours highlight where the gas lives in both galaxies.
    Jupyter Notebook tutorial for accessing MaNGA data at MAST, and making an H-alpha emission map for interacting galaxy pair Mrk-848B.
    View Tutorial

  • SDSS Imaging: HR Diagram

    A color-magnitude diagram of globular cluster M13 created in this tutorial notebook.
    Jupyter Notebook tutorial for accessing SDSS Legacy Imaging data at MAST, creating an HR Diagram and using isochrones to estimate the age of globular cluster Messier 13.
    View Tutorial

  • SDSS Imaging: Galaxy Morphology

    A cutout image of galaxy M88 created in this tutorial notebook.
    Jupyter Notebook tutorial for accessing SDSS Legacy Imaging data at MAST, creating an cutout images using Astrocut and exploring galaxy morphology.
    View Tutorial

  • SDSS Spectra: Stellar Classification

    Example SEGUE data from the SDSS Legacy Spectra survey, showing example spectra for stars with different stellar classifications (OBAFGKM).
    Jupyter notebook tutorial which demonstrates how to download SDSS Legacy Spectra data from MAST and classify stellar spectra from the SEGUE survey.
    View Tutorial

  • Astroquery.MAST Tutorials

    the MAST logo
    Beginner-level tutorials for how to use astroquery to search and download MAST data using Python.
    View Tutorial

External Links

links