NOTE: This step-by-step tutorial is intended for educators, amateur astronomers, and the public. For a fast-paced, in-depth introduction to SQL intended for expert users, see Introduction to SQL.

Searching for Data: A Tutorial

Did you know that you can search through SkyServer's database for only the objects you are interested in? For example, you might want to find all the bright blue galaxies for which we have obtained spectra. Looking through all 14 million objects with the Navigation tool could take years. But using the right search, you could find all the bright blue galaxies with spectra in seconds!

If you know how to retrieve the right data, you can ask millions of different questions. Searching SkyServer is an incredibly powerful tool for conducting astronomy research; in fact, many professional astronomers search the data in the same way you can.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to search SkyServer to answer many useful astronomical questions. Do the tutorial at your own pace, and use the links to the right to return to points later in the tutorial. As you work, you may also want to look at the Sample Queries, which are examples of real queries that other people have written to search the database.

Click Next to start learning.