Marcel Agueros

                                           University of Washington

            (Mis)Using The World's Best Optical Survey: SDSS and Neutron Stars

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has mapped nearly a quarter of the sky to unprecedented depth at optical wavelengths (m ~ 23 mags). In addition to five-color (ugriz) photometry for several hundred million objects, SDSS is producing high quality spectra for millions of galaxies, quasars, and stars--a treasure trove of astronomical data. At first glance, however, these data do not hold much promise for answering one of the fundamental questions in astrophysics: what is the equation of state of neutron stars? Yet while neutron stars are far too faint in the optical to be detected directly by SDSS, the survey data--in combination with those from surveys at other wavelengths--have allowed us to identify nine new candidate isolated neutron stars (only seven are currently known). I describe the program to find these new candidates, and I also describe briefly a new program to use SDSS spectroscopy of white dwarf stars to identify candidate low-mass white dwarf/millisecond pulsar systems. Both of these efforts may eventually allow us to place constraints on neutron star masses and radii, and therefore the neutron star equation of state--thereby extending the influence of SDSS in unexpected directions.