Exhibits
An aluminum “plug plate” to look into the distant universe
Dr. James Gunn with Japanese collaborators (November 13, 2019)
SDSS signboard at the Apache Point Observatory, New Mexico, USA
An aluminum disk plugged with 640 optical fibers in its precisely-drilled holes
- Period of use :
- 2000～2009
- Location of use :
- SDSS telescope at the Apache Point Observatory, New Mexico, USA
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is an international collaboration project begun in 2000 to create a three-dimensional map of the universe. It was proposed by Dr. James Gunn at Princeton University, and launched by a group of American and Japanese astronomers. The Japanese group included eleven members initially, and increased to fourteen as of 2009 when the second phase of the survey was completed. Seven of the fourteen members were from the Faculty and Graduate School of Science at the University of Tokyo.
The SDSS first performed an imaging survey of a three-degree field of view. For each field of view, about 600 bright objects were selected from the imaging data. Holes corresponding to the positions of those objects were drilled precisely in an aluminum disk 80 cm in diameter and 3 mm in thickness, covering the field of view of the telescope. Optical fiber cables were then plugged into each hole to feed light from the telescope to a spectrograph, which analyzed the spectra of the astronomical objects. The SDSS team repeated this process using more than 2,500 aluminum disks, mapping one-quarter of the entire sky. This is one of those disks actually used in the survey,
By 2009, the SDSS had captured images of 230 million astronomical objects and obtained spectra of 460,000 stars, 930,000 galaxies and 120,000 quasars. These observations significantly deepened our understanding of the universe and revolutionized our worldview. Dr. Gunn was awarded the 35th Kyoto Prize for “Outstanding Contributions to the Elucidation of Cosmic History Based on a Large-Scale Wide-Field Observation” in 2019.
- Reference :
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloan_Digital_Sky_Survey
- https://www.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ja/story/newsletter/40/pdf/20080920_40_3.pdf
- https://www.kyotoprize.org/laureates/james_gunn/
- https://www.kyotoprize.org/en/laureates/james_gunn/
- 嶋作一大『銀河進化の謎』（東京大学出版会，2008）（Japanese Only）
- 須藤靖『ものの大きさ 自然の階層・宇宙の階層』（東京大学出版会，2021）（Japanese Only）
Responsibility for wording of the article
Yasushi Suto, Professor, Physics/Research Center for the Early Universe [2022]