| Abstract: | Building on the legacy of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-I and II),
SDSS-III is a program of four spectroscopic surveys on three scientific themes:
dark energy and cosmological parameters, the history and structure of the Milky
Way, and the population of giant planets around other stars. BOSS will measure
redshifts of 1.5 million massive galaxies and Lya forest spectra of 150,000
quasars, using the BAO feature of large scale structure to obtain percent-level
determinations of the distance scale and Hubble expansion rate at z<0.7 and at
z~2.5. SEGUE-2, which is now completed, measured medium-resolution (R=1800)
optical spectra of 118,000 stars in a variety of target categories, probing
chemical evolution, stellar kinematics and substructure, and the mass profile
of the dark matter halo from the solar neighborhood to distances of 100 kpc.
APOGEE will obtain high-resolution (R~30,000), high signal-to-noise (S/N>100
per resolution element), H-band (1.51-1.70 micron) spectra of 10^5 evolved,
late-type stars, measuring separate abundances for ~15 elements per star and
creating the first high-precision spectroscopic survey of all Galactic stellar
populations (bulge, bar, disks, halo) with a uniform set of stellar tracers and
spectral diagnostics. MARVELS will monitor radial velocities of more than 8000
FGK stars with the sensitivity and cadence (10-40 m/s, ~24 visits per star)
needed to detect giant planets with periods up to two years, providing an
unprecedented data set for understanding the formation and dynamical evolution
of giant planet systems. In keeping with SDSS tradition, SDSS-III will provide
regular public releases of all its data, beginning with SDSS Data Release 8
(DR8) in January 2011. (Abridged) |
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