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J.A. Smith (U. Michigan), D.L. Tucker (FNAL), J. Brinkmann (NMSU/APO), J. Annis (FNAL), J.W. Briggs (U. Chicago/Yerkes Obs.), M. Doi (U. Tokyo), M. Fukugita (U. Tokyo/IAS), J. E. Gunn (Princeton), M. Hamabe (U. Tokyo), S. Ichikawa (NAOJ), T. Ichikawa (Tohoku U.), S. Kent (FNAL), T.A. McKay (U. Michigan), R. McMillan (NMSU/APO), A. Merrelli (CMU), H.J. Newberg (FNAL), M.W. Richmond (RIT), M. Watanabe (NAOJ)
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has achieved first light. Though still in the engineering shakedown year, the image quality of some of these early runs is useable for science results.
Although similar to the Thuan-Gunn ugriz system, the SDSS u'g'r'i'z' system has wider effective bandwidths and covers almost the entire spectrum from the 3000~Å\/ to 11\,000~Å. This is a new photometric system; therefore, calibration of a network of primary standard stars is needed before the survey science results can be interpreted properly. Beginning in earnest in March 1998, we started the calibration observations to define the SDSS u'g'r'i'z' standard star system using the 40-inch Ritchey-Chrétien telescope at the United States Naval Observatory's Flagstaff, Arizona Station. As described in the paper announcing the system [Fukugita et al. 1996], the zeropoints for each of the five filters will be set by the metal-poor F subdwarfs BD+17:4708, BD+26:2606 & BD+21:0607.
In this paper, we describe the rest of the stars being considered as potential standards to define this new system, changes from the preliminary list presented last year [Smith et al. 1998], and give some early (NOT YET OFFICIAL) results. Descriptions of the reduction software (D.L. Tucker et al.) and the hardware used to obtain these observations (J. Brinkmann et al.) are described in companion posters.
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: jasmith@sdss1.physics.lsa.umich.edu