Professional and amateur astronomers alike will soon be able to access one of the Web's largest catalogs of astronomical images and information -- a landmark scientific resource that was built with Microsoft(R) technology. This month the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) SkyServer ( http://www.skyserver.sdss.org/ ) will release a new set of data, offering public access and advanced tools for searching and manipulating images of more than 80 million stars and galaxies -- four times as many objects as there are books in the Library of Congress. This "Yellow Pages" of the northern celestial sphere provides public access to the first release of data from the SDSS. The more than 800 GB of data on astronomical objects includes over 3 billion rows of data. "SkyServer is a great example of how Microsoft technology is helping put nformation at astronomers' fingertips, enabling them to work in new and exciting ways," said Jim Gray, a distinguished engineer at Microsoft and one of SkyServer's developers. "Astronomers can now ask complex questions and find the answers almost instantly -- and do this from around the world."