Digitized Sky Survey

The Digitized Sky Survey isn't a single observatory you can visit - it's a vast digitized archive of photographic sky surveys, assembled by the Space Telescope Science Institute from telescopes around the world.

About the Digitized Sky Survey

The Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) is a digitized version of several photographic astronomical surveys of the night sky, produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) between 1983 and 2006. Rather than being tied to one physical site, it combines survey plates covering the whole sky.

History

The first-generation DSS was published in 1994 on 102 CD-ROMs, followed by a compressed version called RealSky in 1996. A second-generation release, DSS2, began appearing on CD-ROM from 2006, with additional data released gradually over the following years. The survey drew on Northern-sky data from the National Geographic Society–Palomar Observatory Sky Survey and Southern-sky data from the ESO/SERC Southern Sky Atlas and UK Schmidt Telescope surveys, and its plates were used to build the first version of the Guide Star Catalog.

Telescopes & research

The survey plates were scanned using Perkin-Elmer microdensitometers, at 25-micrometre pixel resolution for DSS1 and 15 micrometres for DSS2, and the resulting images were compressed with adaptive algorithms. The data covers multiple spectral bands - blue, red and near-infrared - and remains freely searchable online through STScI and partner archives.

Location

Because the Digitized Sky Survey is an archive rather than a single observing site, it isn't tied to one location to visit - its listing on Star Register's map reflects one of the source surveys behind the data rather than a physical facility open to the public.

See your named star from here

The Digitized Sky Survey's plates cover the whole sky by right ascension and declination - the very coordinates that come with every star named through Star Register. Name a star today, or browse the catalogue to see one already claimed, then look it up yourself in the DSS archive.