The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is the most ambitious astronomical survey project ever undertaken. The survey will map in detail one-quarter of the entire sky, determining the position and absolute brightness of more than 100 million celestial objects. It will also measure the distances to more than a million galaxies and quasars. The IDG, in collaboration with Johns Hopkins Astronomers, designed and built the SDSS multi-object spectrographs, which facilitate these distance measurements.

The Instrument Development Group was responsible for the following tasks:

• Optomechanical design of spectrographs
• Fabrication and assembly of spectrographs
• Design and assembly of the control electronics