Sloan 2.5m Telescope

The Sloan 2.5m Telescope (or Sloan Foundation 2.5m Telescope) is a wide-field optical reflector telescope developed for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), located at Apache Point Observatory (APO) in New Mexico. It was partially based upon the du Pont Telescope (at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile), which has been used for the SDSS as well. The Sloan Telescope's imaging survey camera incorporated 30 2048×2048 pixel CCDs, with various filters. It scanned the sky by pointing at a location and scanning along the great circle, with five banks of CCDs, each with a different filter imaging the same area in turn. With completion of the initial survey, further surveys such as APOGEE, BOSS, and MARVELS have used spectrographs. Additional telescopes are also used to carry out the newer SDSS surveys.