  The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has validated and made publicly available its
First Data Release. This consists of 2099 square degrees of five-band (u, g, r,
i, z) imaging data, 186,240 spectra of galaxies, quasars, stars and calibrating
blank sky patches selected over 1360 square degrees of this area, and tables of
measured parameters from these data. The imaging data go to a depth of r ~ 22.6
and are photometrically and astrometrically calibrated to 2% rms and 100
milli-arcsec rms per coordinate, respectively. The spectra cover the range
3800--9200 A, with a resolution of 1800--2100. Further characteristics of the
data are described, as are the data products themselves.
