Using the SQL Search Tool

Open the SQL Search tool. You will see a textbox with a submit button below. Copy the following query and paste it into the textbox (deleting what is already there). Click “CSV” to request results as a CSV (comma-separated value) file. Click Submit. Results will appear in a new window. Wait for all the results to appear — it should take between one and three minutes for the query to run.

select
s.objid, s.ra, s.dec, s.u, s.g, s.r, s.i, s.z

from
star s

join
dbo.fGetNearbyObjEq(229.0128,-0.1082,3) n
on n.objid = s.objid

When the query is finished, save the results to your computer using the “Save” command in your browser. Be sure to save the file as plain text (not HTML), and to give the file extension .csv.

Use Excel’s “Import Text File” option to open the results in Excel (see SkyServer Graphing and Analyzing Data tutorial to learn how to import). Look at the results.

The first column, “objid,” is the SDSS’s Object ID for each star. You can use this number to look up each star in the Explore tool. The next two numbers are the star’s ra and dec. The next five numbers are the magnitudes u,g,r,i,z, which you will use to make your H-R diagram.