The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Understand

This paper describes the Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), marking the completion of the original goals of the SDSS and the end of the phase known as SDSS-II.

• It includes 11663 deg^2 of imaging data, with most of the roughly 2000 deg^2 increment over the previous data release lying in regions of low Galactic latitude.
• The catalog contains five-band photometry for 357 million distinct objects.
• The survey also includes repeat photometry over 250 deg^2 along the Celestial Equator in the Southern Galactic Cap.