By Ron Cowen
When astronomers complete the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in 2004, they will have mapped the position and brightness of more than 100 million celestial objects over one-quarter of the sky. They will also have measured the distance from Earth to more than 1 million galaxies and quasars.
Early findings from this most mammoth of sky surveys, based at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, are already yielding a trove of findings. Among the gems are the two most distant quasars known and new findings about the large-scale clumping of galaxies. In our own solar system, the survey has put the spotlight on asteroids.