The Sloan Digital Sky Survey
  The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) will carry out a digital photometric and spectroscopic survey over pi steradians in the northern Galactic cap. An array of CCD detectors used in drift-scan mode will image the sky in five passbands to a limiting magnitude of r' ~ 23. Selected from the imaging survey, 10^6 galaxies, 10^5 quasars and selected samples of stars will be observed spectroscopically. In addition, a smaller (225 deg^2), deeper, southern survey will reach ~2.0 magnitudes fainter and will contain a wealth of information about variable sources, supernovae and proper motions. We describe the current status of the survey, which recently saw first light, and its prospects for constraining cosmological models. 
Jon Loveday, Jeff Pier