25 Aug 2020
DR2 Available to the World
Read documentation for this data release
The SkyMapper Team is pleased to announce that Data Release 2 (DR2) of the Southern Survey is now publicly available to all users around the world. It is deeper, wider and more accurate than DR1. DR2 improves on DR1 notably by
- Adding Main Survey images; some areas are now complete to 21 mag instead of 18 mag
- Nearly hemispheric coverage with deep i/z-band images
- Greater coverage of the Galactic plane
- Greater homogeneity of photometric calibration using Gaia DR2 as primary reference
- Improved photometric precision (internal reproducibility 0.01 mag in uv, 0.007 mag in griz)
- Improved PSF magnitudes for stars with neighbours, reliable at 1% level for equal-brightness neighbours with >5” separation
- Additional table columns/flags to identify variable objects or objects with reliable PSF magnitudes
- More external cross-matches allowing simple table joins across wavelength and catalogue
DR2 is described in detail in Onken et al. (2019).