Data Products
DR18 contains SDSS-V targeting catalogs, prepared for the Black Hole Mapper and Milky Way Mapper science programs, as well as for open fiber programs. Collectively all these programs are know as MOS (multi-object spectroscopy) programs. These target catalogs use several imaging and spectroscopic surveys as input, including optical and infrared data taken with the BOSS and APOGEE spectrographs during previous SDSS surveys.
Also included in DR18 are eFEDs spectra from the Black Hole Mapper SPIDERS program, as well as a value added catalog based on these spectra.
Access Options
SDSS data products are most often searched using SkyServer for the SDSS Catalog Archive Server (CAS) with SQL and Jupyter notebook interfaces to the catalog data. Full flat files are available via the Science Archive Server (SAS), and each file has a corresponding Data Model.
All of the data access options are most easily selected from the SDSS landing page for DR18:
You can also download SDSS data: have a look at the Getting Data page to get you started. If you are planning to download large quantities of data, check out the Bulk Data Download page for available options.
The Tutorials page has several examples available on how to work with SDSS data.
Previous Surveys
Spectra, catalogs and data products from previous surveys will remain available: see the SDSS-IV data access page. An overview of completed surveys in SDSS-I/II/III and IV, as well as information on how to access and work with the data, as well as data format descriptions, tutorials and caveats can be found on the Completed Surveys page.
Completed surveys in SDSS include: