SDSS Plates as Art in Nashville, Tennessee

Check out these cool art pieces made from SDSS spectroscopic plates!  Nashville based artist, Adrienne Outlaw, designed and built them and they will be exhibited in various locations at Vanderbilt University over the next year. The pictures show their first installation, just in time for the Inclusive Astronomy meeting that started yesterday. The concept design was done by Adrienne Outlaw in collaboration with Vanderbilt astronomers David Weintraub and Billy Teets, and the project was funded by Vanderbilt University’s Curb Creative Campus program.

If you want to learn more about what these plates are, and see them in other art installations please see this previous post on SDSS plates.

We love seeing images of SDSS plates around the world. Please send any you find to us via social media (you can find us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+), or email to outreach ‘at’ sdss.org.

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SDSS Plates

The SDSS has used thousands of plug plates in its fourteen year history. These are large aluminium plates into which tiny holes are drilled. Each hole has an optical fibre plugged into it (by hand by our plate pluggers). Each hole corresponds to the sky location where there is an object (a star or a galaxy) which SDSS wants to measure a spectrum for.

During SDSS spectroscopic observations, between six and nine of these are used every night. Each plate is custom drilled for a special part of the sky (about the size of your palm stretched out at arms length), and once all the data is collected for the astronomical objects in that plate, it becomes surplus to requirements.

All SDSS Collaboration members can request that used plates be sent to them (contact your Collaboration Council Representative for assistance with this). This has resulted in some interesting uses for the leftover plates across our diverse collaboration.

You might like to mount your plates on the wall for display.

A wall mounted plate at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, Portsmouth, UK.

A wall mounted plate at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, Portsmouth, UK. Image credit: Karen Masters

SDSS plates on display at CCAPP (Center for Cosmology and Astrophysics), Ohio State University. Image credit: Qingqing Mao.

SDSS plates on display at CCAPP (Center for Cosmology and Astrophysics), Ohio State University. Image credit: Qingqing Mao.

If doing this, it is helpful to have a good description as a guide. This is especially helpful if you are donating a plate to a local science museum or other location away from SDSS collaboration members who know what it is. The example below was made for a display of plate 825 by Jordan Raddick from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

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To make a version of Jordan’s information sheet tailored for your own plate you can find the sky co-ordinates of your plate in this List of plate observation dates and centres. Then visit the Skyserver Navigate Tool to find an image at this location. You will likely want to invert the images, zoom out to the second largest scale, and overlay the plate location (all under “Drawing Options” to the right of the screen). You can then use Google sky to work out roughly which constellation this plate is in (unless you happen to know!), and the constellation maps are available from the IAU. To convert the MJD of observation to something understandable you might like this MJD converter.

We have a second example of plate display information from David Kirkby at UC Irvine. Here David has made an overlay of the SDSS imaging and coloured marks corresponding to the holes in BOSS plate 6640 (green for galaxies and purple for quasars), as well as an 3D representation of the distances to these objects (based on their SDSS measured redshifts).

An overlay for Plate 6640 showing both SDSS imaging and the location of drilled holes (green = galaxies; purple = quasars). Image credit: David Kirkby.

An overlay for Plate 6640 showing both SDSS imaging and the location of drilled holes (green = galaxies; purple = quasars). Image credit: David Kirkby.

A visualisation of the 3D structure behind BOSS plate 6640 based on redshifts measured by SDSS. Image credit: David Kirkby.

A visualisation of the 3D structure behind BOSS plate 6640 based on redshifts measured by SDSS. Image credit: David Kirkby.

It’s possible to back light wall mounted plates in some circumstances, to really nice effect. The below example was made by Mark Klaene at Apache Point Observatory.

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Mounted in the corner of Mark Klaene’s office at APO. It is spray painted black with a fluorescent desk lamp back light.

If you’re lucky you might find a natural source of light for this effect, as in this example where Stephen Bailey from LBL has mounted a plate in the window in his office door.

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SDSS Plate in an Office Door (the hole was there already).

Several collaboration members have used plates to make special coffee tables, or coffee table covers.

The most basic version of this is just placing a plate on top of a round coffee table of similar diameter.

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Coffee table topper by Bob Nichol, ICG Portsmouth.

This second one uses a 36″ round glass top table topped with a plate. Bumpers have been added to the plate and the normal glass top placed on top of it. The lighting shown below is from a single puck from a modular LED lighting system.

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Coffee table with under lighting by Brian Lee from SDSS-II.

At JHU they have made two coffee tables with the SDSS plates. The base is a hollow box made from scratch of four wood pieces and there is a lamp inside so at night you can see the light shining through the slits.

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Custom coffee table at JHU. Credit: Ting-Wen Lan, Murdock Hart, Guangtun Zhu and Brice Ménard. Photo courtesy of Zheng (Jared) Zheng.

SDSS Plug Plate Coffee Tables in use at JHU. Image credit: Gail Zasowski

SDSS Plug Plate Coffee Tables in use at JHU. Image credit: Gail Zasowski

Plates have also been used to make lab demos. The below is an example set up which LBL has to give quick demos.

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SDSS Plate Demo at LBL.

SDSS plates have also been used to make works of art. The most well know is work by Josiah McElheny in collaboration with David Weinberg (also described here and in this NYTimes Article).

Sculpture by Josiah McElheny using SDSS plug plate. Image provided by David Weinberg.

Sculpture by Josiah McElheny using SDSS plug plate. Image provided by David Weinberg.sdss

 

Sarah Ruether, an artist from Seattle and London based artist Xavier Poultney have also made artwork using plates.

Public art by Sarah Ruether made from SDSS-II plug plates

Public art by Sarah Ruether made from SDSS-II plug plates

Plate Artwork by Xavier Poultney as part of his Transient Objects exhibit.

Plate Artwork by Xavier Poultney as part of his Transient Objects exhibit.

If you have other examples of interesting uses of SDSS plates please let us know about them by commenting below, or emailing outreach@sdss.org.

See how the plates are drilled at the SDSS Plate Drilling Labs at the University of Washington in Seattle:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYyO7pGaJNw]

See how the optical fibres are plugged into a BOSS plate by our awesome SDSS plate pluggers (at Apache Point Observatory): [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6ZOUDWRwtg]

An Artistic Exploration of SDSS

Last summer, London based conceptual artist, Xavier Poultney, made a tour of various SDSS sites in the US. He visited Apache Point Observatory to see the SDSS telescope, the plate drilling labs at the University of Washington in Seattle, and he even went to see the now retired SDSS imaging camera in storage at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC. Several of the photographs taken on that visit can been seen on Xavier’s website, and also the website of Adam Laycock (Xavier’s photographic assistant). Xavier has also made several trips to SDSS Institutional Member, The University of Portsmouth to talk to scientists at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation about the astronomical significance of SDSS.

Out of his various visits, Xavier has developed an exhibit called “Transient Objects” which he describes as: “an artistic investigation into the evolution of knowledge and the cultural ramifications of technological and scientific progress.”

Xavier explains his exhibit further:

The SDSS hardware sits in a region of the New Mexico Desert that has been inhabited by various civilisations of North American Indian for thousands of years. The high-tech, cutting edge equipment of the SDSS observatories are surrounded by the ruins of ancient equivalents. My work explores both the disconnect and the parallels between these two paradigms of human understanding.

This summer I made a photographic research trip across America, visiting working SDSS sites and also archeological sites on Indian
Reservation land. The body of photographs focus on the progress of ideas; on supersession and outmoded thought. The relics of human
progress layer up and fall away, we glimpse the stratification of human knowledge, sitting awkwardly within the deep time of the silent desert landscape.

These photgraphs are to be exhibited alongside a number of large sculptures. The sculptures are made from modern materials (similar
to those used in the technical facilities of the SDSS), machined and designed with computers. However, in form the objects reference naive
religious artifacts, perhaps from a tribal society of some kind, making the sculptures look more like cross between ritualistic object
and defunct scientific instrument.

Some of the photos have already been exhibited in at The Space Inbetween Gallery in London as part of a group show, and the full show (including a sculpture featuring an SDSS plate) is about to open at a the Meet Factory Gallery in Prague, where it will run from March 6-30th.

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Xavier Poulney’s SDSS inspired artwork on show at The Space Inbetween Gallery in London, Jan 2014.

Astronomers attending the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Portsmouth in June will also have a chance to view some of Xavier’s work, which is being shown as part of the public programme linked to the conference.