Welcome to the SDSS tutorial section. This section contains a series of hands-on tutorials to learn how to work with different aspects of the SDSS data. If you are unsure what kind of SDSS data or which SDSS survey is best for your science, then go the the mapper overview page: this page contains short descriptions with links for more details on all SDSS surveys (on-going and completed).
DR18 tutorials
If you want to work with the targeting data released in DR18, then we recommend that you interact with these catalogs in SkyServer. There are several examples of SQL searches available for both Black Hole Mapper and Milky Way Mapper on the SkyServer SQL Search page. If you are unfamiliar with SQL, you will also find more general examples and tutorials on that page.
We have tutorials available on parameter files, fits files, and using bitmasks, and a page with conversions between our wavelength and magnitude systems and other systems. You will find these linked on the right-hand side of this page.
Tutorials for previous data releases
If you want to work with data that was released in SDSS-IV or earlier, then check the Completed Surveys page for direct links to data descriptions, caveats, and relevant tutorials. Completed surveys include:
- Imaging legacy survey (SDSS-I/II)
- Supernova Survey (SDSS-II)
- SEGUE (SDSS-II) and SEGUE-2 (SDSS-III)
- MARVELS (SDSS-III)
- BOSS (SDSS-III) and eBOSS (SDSS-IV)
- APOGEE (SDSS-III) and APOGEE-2 (SDSS-IV)
- MaNGA (SDSS-IV)
- MaStar (SDSS-IV
You can also find an overview page of SDSS-IV tutorials on the SDSS-IV tutorials page.
