DSS1

DSS1, or Digitized Sky Survey 1, is the first generation of the Digitized Sky Survey, a large collection of digital images covering the entire night sky. It was produced by scanning photographic plates from major sky surveys, primarily the northern Palomar Observatory Sky Survey I (POSS I) and the southern ESO/SERC J survey. The results are digital images in two optical bands corresponding to blue and red photographic plates, created to provide wide-area sky coverage for research and education.

DSS1 serves as a foundational historical resource in astronomy, allowing researchers to identify objects, compare images across epochs, and perform searches across archival data. It is widely accessed through online sky portals and virtual observatories, with data usable for morphology studies and initial object detection. While valuable for long-baseline studies and cross-matching with modern catalogs, DSS1 is not a photometrically uniform or precisely calibrated survey by modern standards, and it contains artifacts and varying depths due to the original photographic plates.

The dataset paved the way for subsequent digital sky surveys and improvements in image quality and wavelength coverage. It was followed by Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2), which offers higher resolution, more uniform depth, and additional bands. Today, DSS1 remains a commonly cited reference in astronomical literature and a widely used archival resource for historical comparisons, object identification, and educational purposes.