Astrophysical Research Consortium
To achieve the full promise of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey V (SDSS-V) by completing a five-year, all-sky, spectroscopic survey observing supermassive black holes, the Milky Way galaxy, and interstellar gas in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is one of the Sloan Foundation’s longest running basic science programs, with a nearly 25-year period of continuous observation shedding light on some of the most important questions in astronomy and astrophysics. The fifth phase of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V) consists of an all-sky, multi-epoch spectroscopic survey observing the universe in both the visible and the infrared portion of the spectrum. SDSS-V will observe the entire sky using two complementary telescopes—one at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico and a second at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile—allowing it to map the night sky more fully, with the Chilean telescope able to observe core parts of the Milky Way not visible in the Northern Hemisphere. Grant funds will allow SDSS-V to conduct its originally planned, full five-year observation program and observe multiple objects, at multiple distances, across three constituent sub-surveys: the Milky Way Mapper, which will study the history of our own galaxy; the Black Hole Mapper, which will observe the behavior of supermassive blackholes that sit at the center of galaxies; and the Local Volume Mapper, which will examine the interstellar medium in key regions of the Milky Way and other galaxies. This grant will allow SDSS-V to complete the upgrade to a new robotic focal plane observation system, complete the construction of the Local Volume Mapper instrumentation hardware, and extend the SDSS-V observation period to 2026-2027.