1. High Redshift Quasar Discoveries Scientific knowledge of the Universe’s genesis was advanced with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s discovery of three, new high-redshift quasars. These compact but luminous objects thought to be powered by super-massive black holes reach back to a time when the universe was just 800 million years old. It took roughly 13 billion years for light to reach us from the highest redshift quasar discovered earlier this year in the constellation Ursa Major. Lead investigator Xiaohui Fanwas named the 2003 recipient of the American Astronomical Society’s Newton Lacy Pierce Prize "for his systematic discovery of high redshift quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey." The results of the High Redshift Quasar findings were reported in January 2003 in: The Washington Post (page 1), The New York Times, BBC News, the International Herald Tribune, New Scientist, Science, Nature and more than 30 domestic and international news outlets.

2. A Ring of shattered Galaxies around the Milky Way A team of international scientists from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey discovered a previously unseen band of stars beyond the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy. Hidden from view because it is behind the stars and gas on the same visual plane as the Milky Way, this ring could help to explain how the Galaxy was assembled 10 billion years ago. The ring of stars is probably the largest of a series of similar structures being found around the Galaxy.Sloan Digital Sky Survey investigators believe that as smaller galaxies are pulled apart, the remnants dissolve into streams of stars around larger galaxies. The Milky Way Ring findings were reported in January 2003 in: The Washington Post, USA Today, New York Times, BBC Radio (live interview), CBC, Space.com, New Scientist, Nature, National geographic Channel, Scientific American.com, ABC News.com, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and more than 60 domestic and international media outlets.

3. Spectroscopic Survey Acquires Half a Million Redshifts This February Sloan Digital Sky Survey observers took their 500,000 th spectrum. Efficiency at the telescope has continued to improve as witnessed by 5,760 spectra being taken in a single night early this year. The resultant map is allowing scientist to study the 3D clustering as a function galaxy parameters (elliptical vs. spiral clustering is shown above), and to map out even larger volumes of space with the LRG and QSO (upper right) samples.