Sloan Filters

The Sloan Digital Sky Survery (SDSS) photometric filters were  designed by Fukugita et al. (Ast. J., 411/4, April 1996, p. 1748-1756) to include five mostly non-overlapping filters covering 300 nm to the sensitivity limit of silicon CCD cameras near 1100 nm.  They combined colored glass filters and short-pass dielectric coatings to steepen the low wavelength side of the bandpass. The [O I] sky glow line at 557.7 nm occurs between the g’ and r’ filters, and thus is reduced.

The SDSS photometric system is the most common filter set used today.  The Hubble Space Telescope is equipped with an SDSS set that provides a large reference database for research.  Much of photometry up to magnitude 23 will be done in this system with meter-class telescopes.  The upcoming large collaborative survey projects (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope – LSST; Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System – Pan-Starrs) will also use SDSS filters.