Astronomers have unveiled Data Release 20 (DR20) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey V, adding over 3 million new spectra to map stars, black holes, and interstellar gas across the entire sky.
Key Highlights
- Southern Sky Expansion: For the first time, optical observations expand to the Southern Hemisphere via Chile's du Pont 2.5m Telescope, combining with Northern Hemisphere data for full-sky coverage.
- Black Hole & X-Ray Tracking: The Black Hole Mapper quadrupled its dataset to roughly 1.1 million spectra, partnering with the eROSITA X-ray survey to identify hundreds of thousands of distant energetic targets.
- 1.5 Million Stars: Includes landmark detections like rare carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars in the Magellanic Clouds and the first intermediate-mass stripped star.
- Glowing Nebulae: Spectral mapping covers 6 key regions—including the Orion and Rosette nebulae—supported by LVMvis, a new interactive web browser tool.
Source: Science Daily
