Imaging data

SDSS-III will release the full imaging data set taken by the SDSS imaging camera. These pages describe the nature of the DR8 imaging data and how to use it. In particular:

Basics describes the general nature of the imaging data (runs, camcols, fields, etc).
Data Access describes how to get the data from SAS or CAS.
Pipeline describes the imaging pipeline.
Images describes the available FITS images.
Catalogs describes the available catalog products.
Other info describes some quantifications of imaging quality.
Caveats describes a number of known issues regarding the images.

The SDSS imaging camera took its first science quality data the night of September 19, 1998, and was the world's most productive wide-field imaging facility until its last night of science quality data on November 18, 2009. In between it took a total of around 35,000 square degrees of images, covering a unique footprint of 14,055 square degrees of sky. In DR8 we release images covering this entire footprint, newly reduced and calibrated using the final set of SDSS pipelines.