The Future of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

The After Sloan-V Project

With the fifth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V) expected to wrap up in 2027, the astronomical community has an exciting opportunity to develop a new and ambitious program. The After Sloan-V (AS5) program, expected to begin observations in 2027, will leverage existing and new instrumentation to conduct multiple surveys that advance wide-field spectroscopic science into the 2030s. The proposed AS5 program, planned to consist of four survey programs, will transform our understanding of the dynamic Universe (from quasars to stellar transients) providing complimentary spectroscopic followup of photometrically varying sources (through the Dynamic Universe Explorer), investigate the chemistry and dynamics of the Milky Way’s unexplored regions (through the Hidden Galaxy Explorer), map stars and gas at star-formation scales across Local Group galaxies (through the Local Volume Mapper-2), and probe the key nucleosynthetic pathways that produce the elements of the periodic table with high precision (through the Atomic Genesis Explorer).

Below we describe each of the science programs proposed for AS5.

If you or your institution would like to get involved and join the exciting AS5 program, please contact the AS5 Director Keith Hawkins (University of Texas at Austin, email: keithhawkins@utexas.edu) and the AS5 Project Scientist, Peter Frinchaboy (Texas Christian University, email: p.frinchaboy@tcu.edu).

The AS5 collaboration is currently seeking institutional partners and we have a Call for Seed Funding and an Executive Summary of the AS5 project. Policies for joining AS5 can be found in the AS5 Joining Document, including for a limited time new partners can also a join both SDSS-V and AS5 for a lower combined buy-in.

For more general announcements and to stay up to date on the AS5 project, we invite you to join/subscribe to our as5-general mailing list.