Tonight marks the official start of the fourth phase of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys (SDSS-IV), and the end of SDSS-III.  

SDSS-III ran from 2008-2014 and made a major upgrade of the SDSS spectrographs. SDSS-III contained four interweaved surveys: BOSS focussed on mapping the clustering of galaxies and intergalactic gas in the distant universe;  SEGUE-2 and APOGEE surveyed the dynamics and chemical evolution of the Milky Way; and MARVELS observed the population of extra-solar giant planets. Over the full survey, SDSS-III took more than 2 million spectra, all of which will be released in a final SDSS-III Data Release (DR12 for the SDSS) in January 2015. 

SDSS-IV will run from 2014-2020, comprising three surveys, eBOSS, APOGEE-2 and MaNGA. eBOSS will work to extend precision cosmological measurements to a critical early phase of cosmic history; APOGEE-2 will expand the survey of the Galaxy across both the northern and southern hemispheres, and MaNGA will for the first time using the Sloan spectrographs to make spatially resolved maps of individual galaxies. 

We’d like to take this chance to congratulate the SDSS-III collaboration on a successful set of surveys, and wish SDSS-IV all the best for the future.