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H. J. Newberg (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Sloan Digital Sky Survey Collaboration
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has scored many successes in advancing our understanding of Galactic structure, including discovery of tidal tails on the globular cluster Pal 5, measurement of the physical properties of the thick disk, tracing part of the Sagittarius dwarf tidal stream, and the discovery of a second tidal feature in the plane of the Galaxy. These discoveries are more spectacular given that the SDSS was not designed to study the Milky Way, but to look through it to study the large scale structure of galaxies.
New Galactic structure from the SDSS will be presented, along with an outline of how observations could be extended to better study the Galactic stellar populations after the Sloan Digital Sky Survey ends in June of 2005. The extension would be two or three years, and would include 2000 square degrees of imaging in the Galactic plane and 250,000 spectra of Galactic stars.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.