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We present the second data release (DR2) of the SkyMapper Southern Survey, a hemispheric survey carried out by RSAA with the SkyMapper Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory. DR2 is available to Australian astronomers from 1 March 2019 and is the first release to go beyond the ~18 mag (10-sigma) limit of the Shallow Survey released in DR1. It includes portions of the sky at full survey depth that reach >21 mag in g and r filters. The DR2 photometry has a precision as measured by internal reproducibility of 1% in uv bands and 0.7% in griz bands. More than 21,000 deg^2 have data in some filters (at either Shallow or Main Survey depth) and over 7,000 deg^2 have deep Main Survey coverage in all six filters. The release contains over 120,000 images, as well as catalogues with over 500 million unique astrophysical objects and nearly 5 billion individual detections. It also contains cross-matches with a range of external catalogues such as Gaia DR2, Pan-STARRS1 DR1, GALEX GUVcat, 2MASS, and AllWISE, as well as spectroscopic surveys such as 2MRS, GALAH, 6dFGS, and 2dFLenS. We discuss properties of the data including its limitations, methods to access the data, and example science investigations underway, in order to stimulate as many of you as possible to use SkyMapper for your own purpose. |
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