The Fifth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

This paper describes the Fifth Data Release (DR5) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). DR5 includes all survey quality data taken through 2005 June and represents the completion of the SDSS-I project (whose successor, SDSS-II, will continue through mid-2008). It includes five-band photometric data for 217 million objects selected over 8000 deg² and 1,048,960 spectra of galaxies, quasars, and stars selected from 5713 deg² of that imaging data. These numbers represent a roughly 20% increment over those of the Fourth Data Release; all the data from previous data releases are included in the present release. In addition to "standard" SDSS observations, DR5 includes repeat scans of the southern equatorial stripe, imaging scans across M31 and the core of the Perseus Cluster of galaxies, and the first spectroscopic data from SEGUE, a survey to explore the kinematics and chemical evolution of the Galaxy. The catalog database incorporates several new features, including photometric redshifts of galaxies, tables of matched objects in overlap regions of the imaging survey, and tools that allow precise computations of survey geometry for statistical investigations.