PLEASE NOTE:
This page has moved from its original www-sdss.fnal.gov:8000 location. I have not yet had a chance to update the links, and MANY links in this directory may point to links which don't currently work. In general, if you see sdss.fnal.gov:8000, try www-sdss.fnal.gov:8000, and if you see sdss.fnal.gov:8000/~bclee, try home.fnal.gov/~bclee. Thanks for your patience!

EDR DATA:
SDSS EDR archive pages at STScI
SDSS SkyServer

PLEASE NOTE: This page deals with the SDSS flat files (mostly fits files), otherwise known as the old way of distributing data. The new way of distributing data is the SX or Science Archive. You should really be using the SX. Really. It would make my life a lot easier. But it's still a work in progress, so you may need the flat files after all.

You'll also find some general information about getting started with SDSS data here, so even if you follow my advice about the SX you might find this page useful.

Contents:

• Temporary or unsorted documents
• Data Access documents and links

If you have questions about Fermilab products, please ask your local data guru! If you are the local data guru, here are your contacts for various questions at Fermilab. (Please ask to be added to the list if you're not there and should be! Also join the guru mailing list here.)

• Access and accounts, permission to use FNAL/SDSS cluster resources (disk space, tape drives, processor time, etc.) and data locations: Jen Adelman (jen_a@fnal.gov).
• Software & installation issues (UPS/UPD): John Hendry (jhendry@fnal.gov) and Bruce Greenway (bgreen@fnal.gov).
• Automated data transmissions from Fermilab: Brian Lee (bclee@fnal.gov). (Actually we don't do these any more. Once we have a functioning repository for all the flat files, I'll post that info here.)

Kerberos at FNAL:

Kerberos will be upon us soon, thanks to the DOE. See the Strong Authentication at Fermilab page for more info.

Setting up CVS for use under ssh:

• FNAL's guide to converting from cvs and cvsh with rsh to ssh (Send your public key to jen_a@fnal.gov and/or bclee@fnal.gov.)
• Also please note the steps you need to go through to get this to work.
  • Send your ssh key to jen_a@fnal.gov and/or bclee@fnal.gov.
  • If you want to be able to check in any code you must let us know which CVS packages you need write permission to so that we can change the check_access file. Generally Jen does this, although sometimes I can manage to remember how.
  • As mentioned in the guide above you must have CVS_RSH=ssh (setenv CVS_RSH ssh) and be running under ssh-agent. Otherwise your key is not passed to CVS and it doesn't know who you are.
• If you're getting "User cvsuser is not permitted to modify module" errors the problem is probably either step 2 or 3 above. If we have added your permissions to the check_access file, try ssh-agent xterm, type ssh-add in that xterm, and try checking stuff in from there -- if that works, you weren't running ssh-agent before!

If you want data and/or a Fermilab account:

• Jen Adelman (jen_a@fnal.gov) is our point of contact for new accounts and generally knows where the data is.
• Chris Stoughton's SDSS use of FNALU cluster will tell you how to get an account on the FNALU cluster and how to use it once you have it. The FNALU cluster includes fsgi03 which is presently the only FNAL machine with IDL and formerly the main FNAL disk data archive. We are currently moving both the flat file archive and IDL off this machine, so the longer it has been since I last updated this page, the less likely they will still be there.
• Fermilab SDSS Data Distribution (How to get data from Fermilab): My somewhat outdated guide for data gurus which includes many references to fsgi03 and a tape robot that we quit feeding long ago.
• Retrieving SDSS Data from the Tape Robot, Bob Peterson's update of RoboRead and related info in the last document, but unfortunately still pertaining to a tape robot we no longer use.

Finding and accessing data:

• Getting Started with SDSS Data: as requested by the observers, a one page very abbreviated guide to what flat files you (probably) want and where to find them, along with a few notes on other misc. FNAL/SDSS-specific info it took me months to figure out.
• Looking at imaging data:
  • My Reading tsObj files in IDL tutorial with examples, and Erin's more detailed tutorial.
  • Brian Yanny's Sweeping through the tsObj* catalog files in astrotools.
  • Brian Yanny's findObjs.tcl tcl script for accessing the tsObj files.
    • Postscript sample output
    • Text sample output
• Looking at spectra:
  • Jim Annis and Dan Vanden Berk's plate-specific tsobjs, atlas, and other files are explained here and here. I have (simple) IDL code to use these files if you want examples.
  • The spectro tutorial How can I look at SDSS spectra? will tell you how to look at spectra in SPECTRO, IDL, SM, and even IRAF. (It's a frame on the Spectro home page.)
  • Dan's Spectra Primer has additional examples of all the cases above. You may also want to see his message Displaying SDSS spectra with supermongo.
  • David Schlegel's Princeton SDSS Spectroscopy Home Page has information about spectra at Fermilab and Princeton.

Software and OS:

• UMich SDSS IDL Libraires homepage
• FermiLinux home page
• Fermilab Linux Repository
• UPS Upgrade Information
• SDSS Bug Database

Misc:

• Notes from the July 2000 review data processing breakout session
• internal data distribution material for the July 2000 review

Other useful info and pages:

• Pat Hall's more Princeton specific general intro to the SDSS.
• FNAL's new SDSS FAQ
• Princeton SDSS Data Guru Mailing List Archive
• Princeton SDSS IDL Mailing List Archive
• Public SDSS page
• Project SDSS page
• Fermilab SDSS page
• Princeton SDSS mailing lists