Digitizing 100 Years of Astronomical Data 115
Maximum Prophet writes to mention that a collection of glass plates containing astronomical information from the late 19th century through the mid-1980s is being considered for digitization. "The accumulated result weighs heavily on its keepers on Observatory Hill, just up Garden Street from Harvard Square: more than half a million images constituting humanity's only record of a century's worth of sky. 'Besides being 25 percent of the world's total of astronomical photographic plates, this is the only collection that covers both hemispheres,' said Alison Doane, curator of a glass database occupying three floors, two of them subterranean, connected by corkscrew stairs. It weighs 165 tons and contains more than a petabyte of data. The scary thing is that there is no backup." I'm sure that anyone with a spare $5 million or so would be welcomed with open arms.
That's quite a bit. (Score:3, Funny)
Sounds like a typical lunch clean-up after Rosie O'Donnel.
Sorry. I'm truly sorry.
Re:Glass plates will outlive the digital"backup" (Score:5, Funny)
That's at least... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Saving entertainment. (Score:1, Funny)
sounds familar (Score:4, Funny)
That's what she said!
Re:Would Google archive it, perhaps? (Score:5, Funny)
Searchable in Lat/Lon/time/intensity
that would be awesome...
165 tons? My God (Score:2, Funny)