Astronomical survey

Astronomical surveys generally involve imaging or "mapping" of regions of the sky using Telescopes. In the past,surveys have been usually restricted to one band of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (e.g. light or radio) or to measurements of the flux of one type of particle (e.g. cosmic rays), and they were generally performed as part of the production of an astronomical catalogue for a specific type of astronomical object (like, for example, all the starsbrighter than a certain apparent magnitude). Over the last ten years, taking advantage of technological improvements in the construction of telescopes, and following a general expansion in our understanding of astrophysics at all levels, ithas become commonplace to conduct surveys that join together many different observations of a given region in the sky,obtained with different telescopes at different wavelengths. This so called multi-wavelength approach is now the new standard for surveys, at least in the fields of Extragalactic astronomy and Observational cosmology.

List of sky surveys

*Optical
**National Geographic Society - Palomar Observatory Sky Survey(POSS) - survey of the northern sky on photographic plates, 1948-1958
**Digitized Sky Survey - optical all-sky survey created from digitized photographic plates, 1994
**Sloan Digital Sky Survey - an optical and spectroscopic survey, 2000-2006 (first pass)

*Infrared
**Infrared Astronomical Satellite did an all sky survey at 12, 25, 60, and 100 μm, 1983
** The 2-micron All-Sky Survey, an ground based all sky survey at J, H, and K bands (1.21, 1.59, and 2.15 μm) 1997-2001
**Akari a Japanese mid and far infrared all-sky survey satellite, 2006-2008

*Radio
**HIPASS - Radio survey, the first blind HI survey to cover the entire southern sky. 1997-2002

*Planned
**Pan-STARRS - a proposed 4-telescope large-field survey system to look for transient and variable sources
**Large Synaptic Survey Telescope - a proposed very large telescope designed to repeatedly survey the whole sky that is visible from its location

Surveys of the Magellanic Clouds

* The Magellanic Clouds Photometric Survey - UBVI (optical)
*Deep Near Infrared Survey (DENIS) - near-IR
*Surveying the Agents of a Galaxy's Evolution - a Spitzer Space Telescope legacy observation program of the LMC

Multi-wavelength surveys

* GOODS - The Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey.
*COSMOS - The Cosmic Evolution Survey

Both these surveys are joining together observations obtained from space with the
Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the
XMM-Newton satellite, with a large set of observations obtained with ground-based telescopes

Further information

* See astronomical catalogue for a more detailed description of astronomical surveys and the production of astronomical catalogues
* Redshift surveys are astronomical surveys devoted to mapping the cosmos in three dimensions
* -- List of astronomical catalogues on wikipedia
* Astrograph for a type of instrument used in Astronomical surveys.
* Timeline of astronomical maps, catalogs, and surveys